how does a keygen work??????

[xheavenlyx]

Dude! Ash, dont even go there, you are absolutely right on getting hoocked on or that its an excuse to use pirated software. But remember, a reverse engineer is a reverse engineer, and a cracker is a cracker. A reverse engineer in my openion is 1000 times more powerful, knowledgeable and a senior compared to an engineer. I dont know about KANTH, and I am speaking of the RE's who do cracking to learn, I have done that myself and belive me its NOT easy at all, you learn so much more. Now, at the same time I would not endorse you giving away the cracked software, nor downloading it!!!

And anyway, Its a fact that we all have downloaded, it might be illegal, but we have. And yes programs like MATLAB, SIMULINK, MAPLE or ADOBE PREMIER are very advance and have taken a lot of sweat to make, so they must be bought after using the demo.


And yea, there are forums like DEFCON, SHMUCON and other hacker events where the attendees are actually fbi progrming specialists, regular hackers, RE's. they all get along ok, cuz thats a place to learn the hard stuff without encouraging you to spread the illegal part of it

[hannah]

Well anantsc, keygens are very friendly applications to get our legitimated software. Normally keygen is developed with some type of core programming skills. Basically it generates a key code to use instead of buying a licensed code from the supplier. In other words, it can be said as "program designed to "crack" a software program by giving the you correct serial number and/or modifying it so that it believes you paid for it"

[akravikanth]

Originally Posted by ash

Well akravikanth, you have a good point about the technical version of Reverse Engineering and also glad you differentiated that with cracking. Plus, you must be one of the rare people who would really mean to buy the original software if they like it.

Unfortunately, I doubt that is the general case with the rest of the people. Just like downloading MP3s. Would any of you really by an album of a band you like if you have free access to all the songs that they have made in their entire career? Once you hooked on to it, its probably hard to stop. Its the same case with software.. say you like Photoshop CS2. You download it just to "test" it out, bypassing the protection without any hesitation, cause you have been totally convinced by now that its ok. They you try it out and keep on using it for months.. why, cause maybe you are waiting to save up for money to buy the original perhaps? Then all the sudden, you heard CS3 comes out. You rush to some torrent site to download it so you can also "try it out". I think its obvious this is an on going cycle. Now, perhaps you'll have a new excuse about cracking it for learning purposes. So, are you really going to somehow apply this knowledge for the benefit of the society? That's highly up to the person's intent. You can apply the knowledge so you can crack other software, and of course, you reward yourself somehow with the latest software and some satisfaction. Or, maybe you'll gain some fame from others as one of the best crackers ever?

A few years ago, I have to admit I was a download freak, downloading cracks and serial and cracking software and games like nuts cause I want to get my hands on the BEST and LATEST. I told myself that because I was still a teenager I can't afford it, so it's justified. But later, I discovered the world of open sourced software. So now I have no excuse about affordability. The more I explored OSS, the more I realised life would still be OK without cracked versions of expensive software

Now as studying as an engineer, its more easier to appreciate the efforts that programmers have done to code such complex software. I'm glad I have access to all the sophisticated software on campus like MATLAB, Caita V5, Autocad, etc etc. At least thats a legal way to "test" software, other than just downloading the demo and trial versions. Im not sure about this (perhaps senior CEans can chip in on this?), but maybe when you start working, you can request a licence of a software you'd like to try from your company?

*ahem* anywayz.. I believe we should turn our focus of using Reverse engineering for more constructive purposes. Fine, if you want to crack a software for the sake of learning, thats up to your discretion. But you'll risk falling into a cycle like I mentioned earlier in the post. In the end, its all about ethics. Lets hope that in the future, engineers are regarded as inventors and innovators that will bring benefits to all aspects of humanity, rather than people who are divided and have malintent.

Thanks ash for the points.....

A keygen's algorithm depends on the logic used to protect the software...

There are different kinds of logic used to protect a sotware.. The common logics are:

Asking the user to enter the username and calculating a value based on the username.

Asking for a value which will be calculated based on the PC's serial no.

Asking for values which are hardcoded in the program itself...

Apart from this, many techniques have been employed to protect s/w from reverse engg..

Developers may compress the software and the change of Program's entry point, so that it becomes difficult to disassemble it..

In addition to compression softwares (not winzip, winrar kind of programs), developers may use protection softwares, which will delete or hide the internal detailed structure of the program (which funtion in which dll file the program have to use) so that crackers cant able to trace how the program is working...

For ex. ASProtect, Armadillo etc..... These are the common protector softwares used by developers

similary ASPack is used to compress, not for protection....

But the sad thing is within two days after the release of those kind of protectors, it will be analyzed and crackers find a way to decompress and unhide the internal details of the program...

Due to all of these, All developers finally came to a conclusion that in future, the software will employ no kind of protection... which implicitly means the full fledged emergence of OSS.........