Greetings,

I'm very new to this (started two days ago) but willing to learn.. Maybe you can help me out here: The first target I picked is the time limited trial version of the usenet binaries downloader Ne*sbin 4.0 (NeoLite 2.0 packed) [1]. After 10 days of trial use the program throttles the datarate and starts popping up nag screens all the time. I decided to try and make it never expire instead of going the other route and break into the registration.. that's because the program doesn't validate entered keys locally but checks them against a database.. sounded like more work to me.

So what I did first is I tried to analyze its behaviour.. seems that it somehow remembers the date of its first installation, no matter what you do. When you uninstall it, remove manually any trace from the registry, reboot and then reinstall.. It still knows the number of days you've been using the trial version.

So I had a look at the imported functions and ended up BPXing GetSystemTime.. assuming that at startup the program would determine whether or not the user has trial time left by checking how many days have passed since the installation date. I think I was right.. But as hard as I try I can't find out what data the results of GetSystemTime are compared against, and where?

Part of the problem is that the program seems to encrypt most of its registry entries (CRYPT32.DLL?) and data, making my job not exactly easier. Is there any way to get around this?

I'd be more than glad if you could help me out here. I'm just starting out and I've already spent countless hours on this.. But at least I've already learned a thing or two.

[1] h**p://www.newsbin.com/cgi-bin/fcount.cgi?nb40Pre6.exe

Howdy,

You seem like you want to learn.
What you have described is sort of vague.

You need to concentrate on 1 strategy at a time, you have tried a shotgun approach.

Since you have stated that you have learned a thing or two, go back and rethink what you want to do. Pick one thing that you think will do what you want and see it to the end.

You can patch it but you will still need to focus on 1 thing at a time.

Be eager, find focus, then you will see it.

Peace, Woodmann

Have you ever tried krobar.cjb.net and then the "Begin" section.. You will find allot of information in there and if u really want to learn. Then read those tutorials and read so many as you can, you'll never read loo little tutorials on cracking...

Acid