hello,
I am newbie as well,
I have tried couple of very simple applications to crack,
a program tried to install, put the email and s/n then it gives you a message
that the info not correct or not existed in their DB,
now I used wdasm and Ollydebug seperatly, loaded the program and serached for the text that program gave me,
no such a text found,

where is the text?
need some advise on this please.
can anyone direct me to a tutorial on this ?

thanks.

The text of the "bad boy" message may be encrypted to avoid simple /search attacks like the one you describe, perhaps stored as unicode while you searched ASCII only, or stored away in some mysterious resource file, dll etc instead of inside the obvious executables you have scanned so far.

To do an automatic search for the text in question either in ASCII or UNICODE, use utilities such as GREP for windows, which allows you to search a text snippet through out whole folder/subfolder structures.

Otherwise concentrate on finding the APIs or the CALLs that show you such "bad boy" text, using plain old tracing, my brutal but reliable method to finding anything inside a program

thanks for reply;

wow,
the real work begins,

now searching to find GREP
a link to this, is appreciated

thanks a lot,

What have YOU done to find the answer to YOUR question? Actually read the FAQ and follow it!

I also STRONGLY recommend you spend considerably more effort than "loaded the program and seached for the text that program gave me"; and wdasm? Are we in 1999?

@LLXX: Come on . Myself for example also started with W32DASM which is a quite suffiecent disassembler for beginners. I dont know how you started but when i once was starting in juggling bits and bytes i didn't even know what a debugger was, hehe.

The tools i used were a disassembler (W32DASM) and HIEW. Sure today you can do like that approximately only 3 - 4 % of the apps out there but for a newbie this is still a lot to do

The debugger will come later, since playing like that will soon get boring.



So don't be that hard,

we need newbiez. Without newbiez there will be no cracking in future

Cheers PAPi

But when you started, that was the way it was done. Now we have IDA, but HIEW still finds its uses...

When I started, IDA and HIEW didn't even exist! The times are changing...

They certainly are. When I started, Windows didn't even exist! But I spend my early years reversing on a MAC. Many others here started on Atari and/or other early systems, before any/many ready made tools existed. That neither makes us better nor smarter, simply older!

Regards,

You should change "Super Moderator" to "John McClane"

And when I started there wasn't even such thing as bubble gum

Well Golly Gee "Pii",

That would make you at least 96 years old, since Bubble Gum was first introduced to the American public in 1911.

I guess what this statement actually makes you is "clever by half"!

Regards,

Hey JMI I have an idea that should fill your empty life with some joy. Post an answer that violates the frigging FAQ. This way you could bitch about your own post in your answer to that post, then bitch about bitching in the answer for the answer etc. ad infinitum. You wrote you like arguing. You will have a chance to argue with the smartest and most eloquent person on this forum - yourself. This way, hopefully, you will die from boredom.

In every damn topic I click 20% of it's volume are your posts that contain only bitching. No meritoric content at all, just repeating the same shit over and over again. If you don't like the question / post / topic / author then delete / ban it/him but stop this bitching business man. That's boring, you aren't even trying to think of some clever way to do that.

That's where Razor got their name from. Pitboss really liked bubble gum a lot.


Perhaps deleting a post or banning someone will cause them to come back asking, "why?", whereas yelling at them will at least give them some insight into "why." There's no perfect solution, though

Howdy,

I hate that prick JMI but I cant fire him,
he knows too much shit about me .

Woodmann

Please forgive Pii. Apparently he had forgotten to take his medication and his bi-polar condition flared up.

Having had some substantial experience with individuals with this condition, I would not have thought that a "properly" medicated person would become so agitated upon being told that they had been "clever by half"!

The Deity knows such a comment is generally considered to be a "devastating personal rebuke," particularly by individuals who consider themselves "clever by 55%," or by some greater fraction, or those who object to being considered "clever" at any per cent.

Having been caught in a "Non sequitur," Pii launched himself immediately into "ad hominem," albeit, thereby confirming the original "postulate," that he remains “half the wit” he aspires to be.

Regards,