Cracking Projects For Newbies

Task 1 - Conclusion.... Task 2 Thursday, 04-Feb-99 13:33:00 195.182.164.30 writes: Greetings Crackers, Task one should have been quite easy to carry out once we had set our minds to looking for information rather than trying to change it. Basically, what we are doing is building up a history for this program while trying to also understand why the programmer did what he did and why. This exercise has proved quite fruitful, already we are much wiser and knowledgeable about our target program and for some perhaps, the light may already be shining through their world for the first time!. One often over looked aspect to gathering information about our target programs is that sometimes, golden nuggets of information may already be close by and within our grasp!. If only we took the time to look for it. I refer in this case, of a tutorial I wrote about Memory Game '95 and which, I posted on my web page for the world to see and learn from. This tut was posted at the same time as I sent you all an email announcing the start of this project and could have proved quite useful for most of this project. Don't bother looking for it now, I took it down the day this Project started and will remain out of reach until this project has reached it's natural conclusion. How many times I wonder, have we have spent our leisure time pouring over dead listings trying to figure out a way to understanding a program we wanted to crack, when all the time the information we were toiling over was but a search away!. The author of Memory Game '95 has no web that I am aware of, but if he had, then I would have recommended that you should also visit his web page when gathering information about his software program. You never know what you may find!. In conclusion to task 1, I see that almost everyone has done their work well and were able to summarize quite accurately, the significance of the MEMO95.INI file and of the 'Uninstall' option that exists in the win'95 version of Memory Game '95. Simply left-over code from the Win 3.1 version of the same game. The help file also proved fruitful to us, it tells us the length of the serial code and just as importantly, tells us what this serial code looks like!. A 16 character hex code which is based on your User Name.. Of course, help files in general should always be viewed with some mis-trust since there's nothing to stop the author from trying to give you, the cracker, false information and therefore, try and make you look for something that doesn't exist. This does happen so tread carefully. For those of you who were not able to spot all the clues from your information gathering stage, I recommend that you read all the postings on this forum and make plenty of notes from them. Intro to Task II - Dead Listings. For many newbies, trying to understand a dead listing is an almost impossible task. There's so much unfamiliar code to make sense of, so trying to find the right code belonging to the protection system which itself is buried amongst the game code is like trying to find a needle in a hay stack!. Take heart dear cracker, for within our dead listing are many clues which will further help you. Once you have created your dead listing using W32Dasm, go directly to the String Data Resource option and there you will see all the text strings used within our target program.. What you are looking for are those messages that relate to the registration process. The more helpful the program is towards the User in the registration Screen, the more clues you will see in the program's code. (there are exceptions to this but I won't go into them here). Task 2. 1. Using W32Dasm, create a dead listing of memory Game '95 and explain as best you can, the 'best' location you think we can 'patch' this program. (Hint, locate where the 'Good Cracker' message can be found then look around a little). 2. Will one patch be enough or will it require more?. 3. What problems if any, might we encounter if we went ahead and patched this babe??. 4. What safe guards are in place to prevent you from patching the code, how can we get round them?. Please continue to use your original threads for this and all future tasks, this will help everyone to follow your progress and be able to offer you help if you need it. Also, remember, we do NOT yet need to use Softice, this exercise is to try and help you understand how we can read and use our dead listing in place of going in blind using Softice. I don't NOT want to see postings relating to sniffing out the serial number, this is an exercise in Code Patching and observations. Serial sniffing using softice will be covered shortly. Toolz you will need. W32dasm - Our Dead List creator. Hex Editor - such as Hex Workshop - For testing purposes. If you haven't got a hex editor such as Hex Workshop then try looking here: http://www.bpsoft.com Good Luck, The Sandman The Sandman

Message thread:

The Sandman: Task 1 - Conclusion.... Task 2 (04-Feb-99 13:33:00)

Tuffluck: Re: Task 1 - Conclusion.... Task 2 (04-Feb-99 19:51:09)

Jeff: Re: To TuffLuck (05-Feb-99 11:51:39)

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