5 ms·

Interview with a cracker

77 points by pw 16y ago

losethos 16y ago
I had a job making replacement chips for toner cartridges so they could be refilled. It was legit -- went to the supreme court (Lexmark). I hated that job -- humilating being a reverse engineer instead of an engineer. A idiotic fluke of capitalism found me undoing work instead of doing work -- worse than busywork. Crazy boss expected me to reverse the secure hash algorithm. I'm like, "I think there would be some bigger uses... this is nuts!" What the hell is this job? Some were just mildly special EEPROMs.
randrews 16y ago
If you enjoy puzzle games and programming I would strongly urge you to look into learning to crack. I'm not very good at it (it usually takes me a couple days to break into lightly-protected Mac software) but it's way more fun and challenging than any other puzzle I know. Just don't release what you crack. I either delete the cracked one or pay for it after I'm done; cracking things is more fun than using them to me.
Emore 16y ago
Why does a cracker use a Hotmail account?
- pak 16y ago
  Because you wouldn't expect one to?
  - Emore 16y ago
    I guess. Somehow I pictured crackers jumping between disposable mailing accounts. Or better yet, substituting email needs for /msg on obscure IRC networks.
    - aaronblohowiak 16y ago
      I dont think hotmail is the only mode of communication CrackZ uses =)
    - conductor 16y ago
      He is not a scene cracker, real sceners would never speak public, the sceners are very paranoic about their privacy and security (several layers of vpn and/or bnc) (and they have reasons, there were several raids of several so called top-sites in yurop). Also they don't spread their releases, they "pre" them into the scene and for the scene, but of cource, there are "unsecure" guys there who spread them to p2p/rapidshare/etc.. And site ops are hunting them down and banning from the scene. I can answer to questions, if you want to ask more.
      - soulclap 16y ago
        There are quite a few 'public' places where you can hear 'real sceners' speak these days. Also NFO files (which often contain a lot of 'talk' as well) and scene magazines (such as commented charts) have always been there.
mahmoudimus 16y ago
I've previously had interactions with CrackZ. He's an incredibly sharp individual. He runs a reverse engineering forum called woodmann and he has some great essays here: http://www.woodmann.com/crackz/index.html http://www.woodmann.com/crackz/index.html Definitely worth reading if you're into reverse engineering.
adamta 16y ago
Ohhh, that kind of cracker. I thought it was just going to be an interview with a white guy.
DTrejo 16y ago
A few software authors have ‘crack catcher pages’ for the search engines that say things like “I work 60hrs per day on my software, please support me if you want me to continue adding features” etc. Sounds like it would also be a good idea to include some comments / code in there for crackers to stumble across and guilt them into stopping.
- Locke1689 16y ago
  Uhh... when was the last time you shipped software with source code or unstripped binaries? Might as well put up a white flag at that point.
  - hermitcrab 16y ago
    A cracker will be able to see any unencrypted strings in your binaries. e.g. const char* s = "Dear Cracker...";
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      Yup, I guess you can put any unencrypted line in the .text that you want. I would probably encrypt all the strings though (and just insert the unencrypted in manually).
iuguy 16y ago
If you want to learn more about cracking, the woodmann pages are probably amongst the best (the guy being interviewed is involved in woodman)[1]. If you want to learn more about reversing in general (which in many respects is a lot more wholesome and for some, interesting than cracking) try BIW[2] as the woodmann library is easy to get lost in. [1] - http://www.woodmann.com/forum/index.php http://www.woodmann.com/forum/index.php [2] - http://www.reversing.be/ http://www.reversing.be/
SageRaven 16y ago
I'm all for cracking. In this age of multi-TB drives, it severely pisses me off when I can't rip a DVD/CD to disk or must have the CD/DVD in the drive to play a game. As an admin, mention of "flexlm" gets my blood boiling. As illustrated by the zillions of man-hours wasted on the cat-and-mouse game of protection/cracking, as opposed to productive furthering of the software or other coding pursuits, protection is a waste of everyone's time, especially of the end-user who must put up with it.

77 points by pw 16y ago

I had a job making replacement chips for toner cartridges so they could be refilled. It was legit -- went to the supreme court (Lexmark). I hated that job -- humilating being a reverse engineer instead of an engineer. A idiotic fluke of capitalism found me undoing work instead of doing work -- worse than busywork. Crazy boss expected me to reverse the secure hash algorithm. I'm like, "I think there would be some bigger uses... this is nuts!" What the hell is this job? Some were just mildly special EEPROMs.

randrews 16y ago

If you enjoy puzzle games and programming I would strongly urge you to look into learning to crack. I'm not very good at it (it usually takes me a couple days to break into lightly-protected Mac software) but it's way more fun and challenging than any other puzzle I know. Just don't release what you crack. I either delete the cracked one or pay for it after I'm done; cracking things is more fun than using them to me.

Emore 16y ago

Why does a cracker use a Hotmail account?

pak 16y ago
Because you wouldn't expect one to?
- Emore 16y ago
  I guess. Somehow I pictured crackers jumping between disposable mailing accounts. Or better yet, substituting email needs for /msg on obscure IRC networks.
  - aaronblohowiak 16y ago
    I dont think hotmail is the only mode of communication CrackZ uses =)
  - conductor 16y ago
    He is not a scene cracker, real sceners would never speak public, the sceners are very paranoic about their privacy and security (several layers of vpn and/or bnc) (and they have reasons, there were several raids of several so called top-sites in yurop). Also they don't spread their releases, they "pre" them into the scene and for the scene, but of cource, there are "unsecure" guys there who spread them to p2p/rapidshare/etc.. And site ops are hunting them down and banning from the scene. I can answer to questions, if you want to ask more.
    - soulclap 16y ago
      There are quite a few 'public' places where you can hear 'real sceners' speak these days. Also NFO files (which often contain a lot of 'talk' as well) and scene magazines (such as commented charts) have always been there.

mahmoudimus 16y ago

I've previously had interactions with CrackZ. He's an incredibly sharp individual. He runs a reverse engineering forum called woodmann and he has some great essays here: http://www.woodmann.com/crackz/index.html http://www.woodmann.com/crackz/index.html Definitely worth reading if you're into reverse engineering.

adamta 16y ago

Ohhh, that kind of cracker. I thought it was just going to be an interview with a white guy.

DTrejo 16y ago

A few software authors have ‘crack catcher pages’ for the search engines that say things like “I work 60hrs per day on my software, please support me if you want me to continue adding features” etc. Sounds like it would also be a good idea to include some comments / code in there for crackers to stumble across and guilt them into stopping.

Locke1689 16y ago
Uhh... when was the last time you shipped software with source code or unstripped binaries? Might as well put up a white flag at that point.
- hermitcrab 16y ago
  A cracker will be able to see any unencrypted strings in your binaries. e.g. const char* s = "Dear Cracker...";
  - Locke1689 16y ago
    Yup, I guess you can put any unencrypted line in the .text that you want. I would probably encrypt all the strings though (and just insert the unencrypted in manually).

iuguy 16y ago

If you want to learn more about cracking, the woodmann pages are probably amongst the best (the guy being interviewed is involved in woodman)[1]. If you want to learn more about reversing in general (which in many respects is a lot more wholesome and for some, interesting than cracking) try BIW[2] as the woodmann library is easy to get lost in. [1] - http://www.woodmann.com/forum/index.php http://www.woodmann.com/forum/index.php [2] - http://www.reversing.be/ http://www.reversing.be/

SageRaven 16y ago

I'm all for cracking. In this age of multi-TB drives, it severely pisses me off when I can't rip a DVD/CD to disk or must have the CD/DVD in the drive to play a game. As an admin, mention of "flexlm" gets my blood boiling. As illustrated by the zillions of man-hours wasted on the cat-and-mouse game of protection/cracking, as opposed to productive furthering of the software or other coding pursuits, protection is a waste of everyone's time, especially of the end-user who must put up with it.