[Texas Heat]

Ok so everyone has used some kind of software that requires a user name and password to access. Now I know that there are software packages out that will "crack" cd's and such. But how are they writen? My intent is nothing malicous or anything just curious. How is it that these people can fool a cd, or program to register a password? Does anyone here know? Has anyone else ever wondered? Maybe its just me.

[Chankama]

Meh.. Anything where your verification is done completely locally, you can break it. It's just a matter of finding out which information to dig out from the app. After all, teh info IS buried somwhere inside your computer.....

Only if the verification is done at the server side will you not be able to "find out" the correct information as it is contained on the server side.

If you actually "modify" the program all bets are off. They can't really do anything about it. If you hack the code and take out the verificaiton subsystem, you have the rest of the program for your own use.

I use a program that is in constant contact with the server. If I disconnect from the internet, I have 20 min to save my work and exit. Othewise, the program will exit. As I said before, if I were to modify the verification system, I wouldn't have to go through this trouble.. My point is, applications can never be made secure. You can only hope to make the cost/benefit ratio as high as possible

I am not going to post more details due to forum rules.

[FireFox]

Logarithms. Have fun.

[kostas]

Originally posted by FireFox
Logarithms. Have fun.

do you mean algorithms?

[Osiris]

Hes right:

A LOGARITHM is an exponent. It is the expontent to which the base must be raised to produce a given number.

[FireFox]

Yea, he's right. That was my 5 second post of the day where I sneak on for 2 minutes during lunch at school. Didn't have time to edit it.

[Texas Heat]

OK so lets pretend I don't know a **** thing about logarithms...where should I start.

[horndude]

Originally posted by Texas Heat
Ok so everyone has used some kind of software that requires a user name and password to access. Now I know that there are software packages out that will "crack" cd's and such. But how are they writen? My intent is nothing malicous or anything just curious. How is it that these people can fool a cd, or program to register a password? Does anyone here know? Has anyone else ever wondered? Maybe its just me.

if your talking about cracking a program that needs CD verfication you just take the original and open it up in a debugger and hex editor and step thru it step by step till you find the places where it branches or forks to look for the CD, change it so it doesnt fork, save it and then copy that over the original. You can do the same for password verification, just get rid of the password verification part. Is that what your talking about?

Other way is just to brute force the password with something like "john the ripper".

[Dave]

Originally posted by Texas Heat
OK so lets pretend I don't know a **** thing about logarithms...where should I start.

There are plenty of sites that teach how to get past passwords, and how to register programs without the given key. However, this is not one of those sites.

Google searches will find more than you ever wanted to know about it!

Before we go toooooo far, thread closed.

Dave