4 ms·

It's expected that hobbyists will pirate it.

by brandonhsiao 9y ago

dijit 9y ago
Thats a crappy model; I'd pay for it if it were available. Especially on my preferred platform. (Linux)
- khedoros1 9y ago
  The Starter Edition license is $739, and is available on Linux. I've heard that it can take some work to get them to agree to sell you a copy (liability concerns, or something)
adamnemecek 9y ago
It's my understanding that people who have previously pirated it are blacklisted from every using the sw legally thereby potentially making it impossible to get a job in the industry.
- cesarb 9y ago
  If true, that would also scare me from using it legally. What if a glitch (perhaps due to a failing memory chip, or a bug on a modified kernel) makes it think I'm using a pirated version?
- Toast_25 9y ago
  What's your source on this? And what's preventing users from simply deleting the files/formatting their OS/getting a new e-mail?
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    Second paragraph of Hex-Ray's stance on piracy https://books.google.com/books?id=3nPAM3AZ1foC&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=ida+pro+blacklisted+license&source=bl&ots=Nm2cLTGgAm&sig=UqaPl13FHTX-hO8vIp_WlBY841c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR3o-e16XWAhUSyWMKHbgwDukQ6AEINTAC#v=onepage&q=ida%20pro%20blacklisted%20license&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=3nPAM3AZ1foC&pg=PA32&lpg=P...
    - Pete_D 9y ago
      If I'm reading this right, the blacklist only applies to people who leak their legally purchased copies, not everyone who's ever used a pirated copy.
- blibble 9y ago
  that would seem to be a extremely stupid way of converting hobbyists into paying commercial users
  - captainmuon 9y ago
    Especially since there is no way I'm buying this as a hobbyist. I'd like to have it, but I don't need it and can't afford it - so I either pirate it or won't use it. If I got access, by pirating, or having a free / subsidized / university version, I might be able to develop my skills such that I can use this professionally, and would certainly be able to buy a license (and ongoing support). But like this, the only way I could "get into" IDA Pro is by using it at a company where the bought a license. Also, the developers should really release a new demo/evaluation version, supporting 64 bit.
    - khedoros1 9y ago
      > But like this, the only way I could "get into" IDA Pro is by using it at a company where the bought a license. Or use the older, free version, which would be enough to develop some skills and become familiar with the general operation of the program.
      - khedoros1 9y ago
        If someone else has a better idea of how to legally become familiar with the program without paying $739 for a Starter Edition license, I'd like to hear it.
        fish_fan 9y ago
        You might try pleading directly to the devs—it worked for me before I got a job (I was still in high school).
- utku_karatas2 9y ago
  How do you even enforce such a policy? And who the hell is IDA run by? The Soup Nazi?
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Pretty much. They took a run at us about 10 years ago. I wrote a sort of semi-popular blog post about figuring out what crypto an app uses by looking for constants for particular crypto algorithms using IDA, and they looked me up in their license database and freaked out publicly because I wasn't registered. We privately pointed out that we were using a letter-coded license on behalf of a client, and they called us liars because they could only think of a few clients they had with such a licensing arrangement (obviously, we weren't in a position to tell them which client it was). This is, again, for a simple mention of IDA in a public blog post. After Ilfak left DataRescue to do Hex-rays, his Hex-rays IDA pages kept the one blacklisting the dude they had caught pirating. Amusingly, the DataRescue IDA page is basically only about piracy now: http://www.datarescue.com/idabase/ http://www.datarescue.com/idabase/ Whatever the "expectation" about piracy there is for IDA, it seems safe to say the IDA people themselves don't share it.
    - brandonhsiao 9y ago
      That's fascinating. I'd lumped IDA in with e.g. Photoshop. Was wrong. Did they ever retract their public freaking out?
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    They're very difficult to deal with. Renewing my license which was in my name, but at a company I didn't actively work with, was a pain. Even though I had a valid email address at the company in question (part owner). They wanted the company to verify I was allowed to pay them to buy the product. Took over a week IIRC for me to give them money. Then, if you lose your downloads (in my case, corrupted file) and your contract expires, you're out of luck. Since they make a separate EXE for each customer, they don't provide any way of getting the software once your support contract ends. Seems silly, considering pirated copies are readily obtainable. But, they're the best so they can act like this and get away with it.
- problems 9y ago
  It's not people who have previously pirated it - it's people who have intentionally leaked their copy to crackers.
- fish_fan 9y ago
  From every what? It's hard for me to imagine a company caring about such a thing; this seems like something the courts handle just fine.
AlexMax 9y ago
I have no first hand knowledge, but it is my understanding based on what others have told me that IDA Pro is actually kind of difficult to crack and pirate. I don't know how true this is, but it makes logical sense - the developers of a reverse-engineering tool are likely far more clever at anti-piracy mitigations than your average programmer.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- rootw0rm 9y ago
  yeah, it's not the easiest to circumvent. 7.0 will probably see a scene release tho.
- bathory 9y ago
  with a certain regularity ida pro versions leak, because companies who purchased ida pro get hacked. sometimes these ida pro versions are only available to a select few (the hacking crew, their friends etc.) but sometimes even those versions get leaked.
captainmuon 9y ago
I would be afraid to use a pirated version of this. Certainly the authors are experts in cracking and countermeasures. They could do sneaky stuff like pretending to work and then breaking later, or silently produce wrong output. I heard a rumor that the cracked version calls home with your identity and blacklists you for life. Don't think it is true though. (Edit: I think what they do is they embed your key into saved files, and if a key leaks, blacklist it such that later versions cannot open them.)
- Avery3R 9y ago
  If a database was created using an instance of IDA that was running on a known blacklisted key you'll get a "Sorry, you can't open this database because it was created using a pirated version of IDA" message, and if you try to open a database that's missing the license info you'll get a "Database is corrupt." message. It's still pretty easy to patch out these messages and open the databases anyways though. There's also a map [1] on the old IDA website showing geolocated IPs of users that tried to request updates using pirated keys. [1] http://www.datarescue.com/idabase/ http://www.datarescue.com/idabase/
lawnchair_larry 9y ago
Wow, you could not be more wrong on that. They've gone to greater lengths than any other vendor I can think of to prevent piracy and punish those who do.

It's expected that hobbyists will pirate it.

dijit 9y ago

Thats a crappy model; I'd pay for it if it were available. Especially on my preferred platform. (Linux)

khedoros1 9y ago
The Starter Edition license is $739, and is available on Linux. I've heard that it can take some work to get them to agree to sell you a copy (liability concerns, or something)

adamnemecek 9y ago

It's my understanding that people who have previously pirated it are blacklisted from every using the sw legally thereby potentially making it impossible to get a job in the industry.

cesarb 9y ago
If true, that would also scare me from using it legally. What if a glitch (perhaps due to a failing memory chip, or a bug on a modified kernel) makes it think I'm using a pirated version?
Toast_25 9y ago
What's your source on this? And what's preventing users from simply deleting the files/formatting their OS/getting a new e-mail?
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  Second paragraph of Hex-Ray's stance on piracy https://books.google.com/books?id=3nPAM3AZ1foC&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=ida+pro+blacklisted+license&source=bl&ots=Nm2cLTGgAm&sig=UqaPl13FHTX-hO8vIp_WlBY841c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR3o-e16XWAhUSyWMKHbgwDukQ6AEINTAC#v=onepage&q=ida%20pro%20blacklisted%20license&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=3nPAM3AZ1foC&pg=PA32&lpg=P...
  - Pete_D 9y ago
    If I'm reading this right, the blacklist only applies to people who leak their legally purchased copies, not everyone who's ever used a pirated copy.
blibble 9y ago
that would seem to be a extremely stupid way of converting hobbyists into paying commercial users
- captainmuon 9y ago
  Especially since there is no way I'm buying this as a hobbyist. I'd like to have it, but I don't need it and can't afford it - so I either pirate it or won't use it. If I got access, by pirating, or having a free / subsidized / university version, I might be able to develop my skills such that I can use this professionally, and would certainly be able to buy a license (and ongoing support). But like this, the only way I could "get into" IDA Pro is by using it at a company where the bought a license. Also, the developers should really release a new demo/evaluation version, supporting 64 bit.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    > But like this, the only way I could "get into" IDA Pro is by using it at a company where the bought a license. Or use the older, free version, which would be enough to develop some skills and become familiar with the general operation of the program.
    - khedoros1 9y ago
      If someone else has a better idea of how to legally become familiar with the program without paying $739 for a Starter Edition license, I'd like to hear it.
      - fish_fan 9y ago
        You might try pleading directly to the devs—it worked for me before I got a job (I was still in high school).
utku_karatas2 9y ago
How do you even enforce such a policy? And who the hell is IDA run by? The Soup Nazi?
- tptacek 9y ago
  Pretty much. They took a run at us about 10 years ago. I wrote a sort of semi-popular blog post about figuring out what crypto an app uses by looking for constants for particular crypto algorithms using IDA, and they looked me up in their license database and freaked out publicly because I wasn't registered. We privately pointed out that we were using a letter-coded license on behalf of a client, and they called us liars because they could only think of a few clients they had with such a licensing arrangement (obviously, we weren't in a position to tell them which client it was). This is, again, for a simple mention of IDA in a public blog post. After Ilfak left DataRescue to do Hex-rays, his Hex-rays IDA pages kept the one blacklisting the dude they had caught pirating. Amusingly, the DataRescue IDA page is basically only about piracy now: http://www.datarescue.com/idabase/ http://www.datarescue.com/idabase/ Whatever the "expectation" about piracy there is for IDA, it seems safe to say the IDA people themselves don't share it.
  - brandonhsiao 9y ago
    That's fascinating. I'd lumped IDA in with e.g. Photoshop. Was wrong. Did they ever retract their public freaking out?
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  They're very difficult to deal with. Renewing my license which was in my name, but at a company I didn't actively work with, was a pain. Even though I had a valid email address at the company in question (part owner). They wanted the company to verify I was allowed to pay them to buy the product. Took over a week IIRC for me to give them money. Then, if you lose your downloads (in my case, corrupted file) and your contract expires, you're out of luck. Since they make a separate EXE for each customer, they don't provide any way of getting the software once your support contract ends. Seems silly, considering pirated copies are readily obtainable. But, they're the best so they can act like this and get away with it.
problems 9y ago
It's not people who have previously pirated it - it's people who have intentionally leaked their copy to crackers.
fish_fan 9y ago
From every what? It's hard for me to imagine a company caring about such a thing; this seems like something the courts handle just fine.

AlexMax 9y ago

I have no first hand knowledge, but it is my understanding based on what others have told me that IDA Pro is actually kind of difficult to crack and pirate. I don't know how true this is, but it makes logical sense - the developers of a reverse-engineering tool are likely far more clever at anti-piracy mitigations than your average programmer.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rootw0rm 9y ago
yeah, it's not the easiest to circumvent. 7.0 will probably see a scene release tho.
bathory 9y ago
with a certain regularity ida pro versions leak, because companies who purchased ida pro get hacked. sometimes these ida pro versions are only available to a select few (the hacking crew, their friends etc.) but sometimes even those versions get leaked.

captainmuon 9y ago

I would be afraid to use a pirated version of this. Certainly the authors are experts in cracking and countermeasures. They could do sneaky stuff like pretending to work and then breaking later, or silently produce wrong output. I heard a rumor that the cracked version calls home with your identity and blacklists you for life. Don't think it is true though. (Edit: I think what they do is they embed your key into saved files, and if a key leaks, blacklist it such that later versions cannot open them.)

Avery3R 9y ago
If a database was created using an instance of IDA that was running on a known blacklisted key you'll get a "Sorry, you can't open this database because it was created using a pirated version of IDA" message, and if you try to open a database that's missing the license info you'll get a "Database is corrupt." message. It's still pretty easy to patch out these messages and open the databases anyways though. There's also a map [1] on the old IDA website showing geolocated IPs of users that tried to request updates using pirated keys. [1] http://www.datarescue.com/idabase/ http://www.datarescue.com/idabase/

lawnchair_larry 9y ago

Wow, you could not be more wrong on that. They've gone to greater lengths than any other vendor I can think of to prevent piracy and punish those who do.