5 ms·

Simple but probably effective. In terms of protecting against regular end users fiddling with the system time I mean. On a related note I remember many years a

Simple but probably effective. In terms of protecting against regular end users fiddling with the system time I mean. On a related note I remember many years ago when I was using Windows, and there was a third-party utility to monitor the registry for changes. I only had the trial version of the utility, but using the utility itself I found that they were storing information in the registry about when the trial would expire. So I was able to use the utility to discover and defeat the trial protection of itself. So that was cool in and of itself. But I also found that, even though this was in a time before most software would do online checks, many pieces of software were able to know that the trial had expired even if I tried things like setting the clock back or removing registry entries they had created. Probably some of those pieces of software were doing similar things to the one mentioned in the OP. But it never occurred to me at the time. I’m not even sure I would have thought of this even today if I were to try it. But these days I use software that’s open source for a lot of things instead, and where I need proprietary software I pay for it instead. If it’s proprietary and not worth the money then it’s not worth using either. Though I am still sad that Adobe switched to a subscription based payment which I ended up not being able to afford and don’t want to sign up for again because of their horrible billing practices. So I am stuck not being able to run Adobe software even though I would have liked to.

Causality1 5y ago
You're giving me flashbacks to the bad old days when Opera was the only competent browser for Windows Mobile devices. What made them the bad old days? They only had a trial version, and some time after the paid version didn't come out the date limit on the trial version expired, so thousands of people turned the dates back and sacrificed the entire "organization" category of PDA functionality just to keep using a good browser. I believe a full version of Opera was eventually released but it took a very long time.
- zeusk 5y ago
  Not sure what version you're talking about, but I had 6.1, 6.5 devices and they all ran fennec (firefox).
  - Causality1 5y ago
    Fennec came out in 2009, five or six years after the events I'm talking about.
phire 5y ago
In the windows 9x days, software had direct access to hardware without needing any permission. They could get very creative about where the trial end date could be hidden. They could write it to random blocks of the fat32 partition marked as "free". They could even find unallocated blocks outside of the partition table and write it there. Or you could write it to the contents of a file without going though the regular file APIs, so it's modification date wouldn't change. As long as just one copy of the trial end date stays intact, it can simply take the latest one.
- fragmede 5y ago
  which, it'll also stat() a bunch of "random" files (among other things)
- ale42 5y ago
  I had a case of a program that had to run with admin rights, it was storing the info in some of the first sectors of the HD (yes it's possible without direct hardware access, you "just" need admin rights). Of course it corrupted my GRUB... they didn't think that there might be useful data between the MBR and the first partition. This happened around 2010, so no need to go back to Windows 9x to find very weird stuff ;)
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050607-00/?p=35413 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050607-00/?p=35... "What if two programs did this?"
Benjamin_Dobell 5y ago
> So I was able to use the utility to discover and defeat the trial protection of itself. This is why I used to feel bad for Hex Rays / IDA Pro. When your product is a disassembler, there's bound to be someone in your target audience capable of cracking your software. P.S. Don't use a cracked IDA Pro. Checkout Hopper instead. It's reasonably priced and really solid software. Been using it on and off for years.
- emidln 5y ago
  Cracking IDA Pro used to be part of the experience.
  - stevekemp 5y ago
    For me it was Numega's SoftICE, which was an amazing debugger. Using it to defeat it's own protection always struck me as ironic, but I guess also to be expected. I hacked software for many years, for my personal amusement rather than profit, as it always reminded me of being a teenager hacking games for infinite lives, etc. Now and again I take a stab at commercial linux software, but there isn't so much out there with the standard "Enter License Key" kinda protection.
    - takeda 5y ago
      > as it always reminded me of being a teenager hacking games for infinite lives, etc Now you have Cheat Engine[1] specializing just on that [1] https://cheatengine.org/ https://cheatengine.org/
- mike_d 5y ago
  My Google-fu is failing me at the moment, but I remember a piece of malware actually included the copyright string of a disassembler so it would detect "itself" and not let you analyze the malware sample.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    Going to show just how rudimentary said scanning is sometimes.
sneak 5y ago
> Though I am still sad that Adobe switched to a subscription based payment Blackmagic Davinci Resolve is pay-once-for-life, works on linux, and is better than Premiere. Even if it were only equally good, not being subscriptionware means I'm a loyal user.
- MrMorden 5y ago
  Basic users don't even have to pay, and if you're doing something that requires the paid version you can buy and will benefit from the $300 control surface that also includes a Studio license.
  - sneak 5y ago
    Non-pro Resolve can't edit h265/HEVC, which is more and more common out of cameras (like my a7s3) these days. The license isn't expensive for what you get. I bought the USB dongles so I can easily transfer it between computers and also completely block Resolve from accessing the network via Little Snitch. I can also heartily endorse the Speed Deck control surface, which is way less than $300 and also comes with a pro license.
    - codetrotter 5y ago
      > Non-pro Resolve can't edit h265/HEVC, which is more and more common out of cameras (like my a7s3) these days. When I come across files that DaVinci Resolve won’t open, I convert them to a format that DaVinci Resolve likes by first using the open source command-line utility ffmpeg.
- codetrotter 5y ago
  Been using DaVinci Resolve for a couple of years and love it to bits :) It’s Photoshop and Illustrator that I miss the most. Occasionally I also miss Adobe Animate.
  - sneak 5y ago
    I prefer Pixelmator to Photoshop, and it's also not a subscription (and made by cool people). I still don't have a Lightroom replacement, so I just crack it.
alternatetwo 5y ago
Age of Empires 2 does something similarly tricky for beta/trial versions - when it's check_expiration check fails once, it writes some "hard to find" registry value (Software\X\DT2 to 1 for aok and Software\TC\XPX to 7 for aoc), and then thereafter also fails if this value exists and is the previously written value to prevent you changing your system clock to circumvent that check. Of course that's all rather silly since a 1 byte change in WinMain also defeats this, but that requires modifying the program ...
- ale42 5y ago
  Actually many programs write license/demo expiry/... data to very hard-to-find registry keys... maybe just in plain sight under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion which has so much stuff that basically nobody knows what actually belongs there, unless you are monitoring it for changes...
  - techdragon 5y ago
    Keeping “snapshots” of your registry on a windows machine is one of the fastest ways to improve your understanding of how a lot of commercial software “does business”. From weird (or outright dangerous trial license tricks, I once saw a shareware program that stashed its keys with a fake program name in a legit Adobe registry tree path) to programs that store detailed settings to a level that really warrants a dedicated settings file/database or even what UI mode they are in just spamming the registry all the time… no wonder some people had constant problems with registry corruption back in the day!
    - ale42 5y ago
      Indeed, I've seen so many weird places program wrote license/demo timer data to... not sure if it was the same software as you (can't even remember which one it was) but a shareware writing to a legit Adobe key reminds me of something... ;-)
taitems 5y ago
That sounds like the steps I saw to get a free version of the original version of Little Snitch. Simply use Little Snitch to stop Little Snitch from phoning home.
- empressplay 5y ago
  Unfortunately Little Snitch stopped allowing itself to be blocked and turned into a full blown rat. That said, Lulu is free
ChuckMcM 5y ago
This bit me once when I was hosting my FPGA design on an NFS server which lost the CMOS battery so it came up with a very weird date. The computer mounting it was fine but the files would get their access time screwed up. And then FlexLM bombed out. So very annoying.

Causality1 5y ago

You're giving me flashbacks to the bad old days when Opera was the only competent browser for Windows Mobile devices. What made them the bad old days? They only had a trial version, and some time after the paid version didn't come out the date limit on the trial version expired, so thousands of people turned the dates back and sacrificed the entire "organization" category of PDA functionality just to keep using a good browser. I believe a full version of Opera was eventually released but it took a very long time.

zeusk 5y ago
Not sure what version you're talking about, but I had 6.1, 6.5 devices and they all ran fennec (firefox).
- Causality1 5y ago
  Fennec came out in 2009, five or six years after the events I'm talking about.

phire 5y ago

In the windows 9x days, software had direct access to hardware without needing any permission. They could get very creative about where the trial end date could be hidden. They could write it to random blocks of the fat32 partition marked as "free". They could even find unallocated blocks outside of the partition table and write it there. Or you could write it to the contents of a file without going though the regular file APIs, so it's modification date wouldn't change. As long as just one copy of the trial end date stays intact, it can simply take the latest one.

fragmede 5y ago
which, it'll also stat() a bunch of "random" files (among other things)
ale42 5y ago
I had a case of a program that had to run with admin rights, it was storing the info in some of the first sectors of the HD (yes it's possible without direct hardware access, you "just" need admin rights). Of course it corrupted my GRUB... they didn't think that there might be useful data between the MBR and the first partition. This happened around 2010, so no need to go back to Windows 9x to find very weird stuff ;)
- josephcsible 5y ago
  https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050607-00/?p=35413 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050607-00/?p=35... "What if two programs did this?"

Benjamin_Dobell 5y ago

> So I was able to use the utility to discover and defeat the trial protection of itself. This is why I used to feel bad for Hex Rays / IDA Pro. When your product is a disassembler, there's bound to be someone in your target audience capable of cracking your software. P.S. Don't use a cracked IDA Pro. Checkout Hopper instead. It's reasonably priced and really solid software. Been using it on and off for years.

emidln 5y ago
Cracking IDA Pro used to be part of the experience.
- stevekemp 5y ago
  For me it was Numega's SoftICE, which was an amazing debugger. Using it to defeat it's own protection always struck me as ironic, but I guess also to be expected. I hacked software for many years, for my personal amusement rather than profit, as it always reminded me of being a teenager hacking games for infinite lives, etc. Now and again I take a stab at commercial linux software, but there isn't so much out there with the standard "Enter License Key" kinda protection.
  - takeda 5y ago
    > as it always reminded me of being a teenager hacking games for infinite lives, etc Now you have Cheat Engine[1] specializing just on that [1] https://cheatengine.org/ https://cheatengine.org/
mike_d 5y ago
My Google-fu is failing me at the moment, but I remember a piece of malware actually included the copyright string of a disassembler so it would detect "itself" and not let you analyze the malware sample.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  Going to show just how rudimentary said scanning is sometimes.

sneak 5y ago

> Though I am still sad that Adobe switched to a subscription based payment Blackmagic Davinci Resolve is pay-once-for-life, works on linux, and is better than Premiere. Even if it were only equally good, not being subscriptionware means I'm a loyal user.

MrMorden 5y ago
Basic users don't even have to pay, and if you're doing something that requires the paid version you can buy and will benefit from the $300 control surface that also includes a Studio license.
- sneak 5y ago
  Non-pro Resolve can't edit h265/HEVC, which is more and more common out of cameras (like my a7s3) these days. The license isn't expensive for what you get. I bought the USB dongles so I can easily transfer it between computers and also completely block Resolve from accessing the network via Little Snitch. I can also heartily endorse the Speed Deck control surface, which is way less than $300 and also comes with a pro license.
  - codetrotter 5y ago
    > Non-pro Resolve can't edit h265/HEVC, which is more and more common out of cameras (like my a7s3) these days. When I come across files that DaVinci Resolve won’t open, I convert them to a format that DaVinci Resolve likes by first using the open source command-line utility ffmpeg.
codetrotter 5y ago
Been using DaVinci Resolve for a couple of years and love it to bits :) It’s Photoshop and Illustrator that I miss the most. Occasionally I also miss Adobe Animate.
- sneak 5y ago
  I prefer Pixelmator to Photoshop, and it's also not a subscription (and made by cool people). I still don't have a Lightroom replacement, so I just crack it.

alternatetwo 5y ago

Age of Empires 2 does something similarly tricky for beta/trial versions - when it's check_expiration check fails once, it writes some "hard to find" registry value (Software\X\DT2 to 1 for aok and Software\TC\XPX to 7 for aoc), and then thereafter also fails if this value exists and is the previously written value to prevent you changing your system clock to circumvent that check. Of course that's all rather silly since a 1 byte change in WinMain also defeats this, but that requires modifying the program ...

ale42 5y ago
Actually many programs write license/demo expiry/... data to very hard-to-find registry keys... maybe just in plain sight under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion which has so much stuff that basically nobody knows what actually belongs there, unless you are monitoring it for changes...
- techdragon 5y ago
  Keeping “snapshots” of your registry on a windows machine is one of the fastest ways to improve your understanding of how a lot of commercial software “does business”. From weird (or outright dangerous trial license tricks, I once saw a shareware program that stashed its keys with a fake program name in a legit Adobe registry tree path) to programs that store detailed settings to a level that really warrants a dedicated settings file/database or even what UI mode they are in just spamming the registry all the time… no wonder some people had constant problems with registry corruption back in the day!
  - ale42 5y ago
    Indeed, I've seen so many weird places program wrote license/demo timer data to... not sure if it was the same software as you (can't even remember which one it was) but a shareware writing to a legit Adobe key reminds me of something... ;-)

taitems 5y ago

That sounds like the steps I saw to get a free version of the original version of Little Snitch. Simply use Little Snitch to stop Little Snitch from phoning home.

empressplay 5y ago
Unfortunately Little Snitch stopped allowing itself to be blocked and turned into a full blown rat. That said, Lulu is free

ChuckMcM 5y ago

This bit me once when I was hosting my FPGA design on an NFS server which lost the CMOS battery so it came up with a very weird date. The computer mounting it was fine but the files would get their access time screwed up. And then FlexLM bombed out. So very annoying.