Target group:
Newbies.
Prerequisites:
OK, today we gonna reverse HexWorkshop 2.10. Actually we won't really reverse it we will just crack it, that means we won't go into detail very much. The best way of cracking a serial protection is by finding out the right serial and use it. The second best way of cracking it is to let the program believe that the entered serial is the right, the third best way is to disable all the nag's, crippled features, etc. by patching the program (well, it's good for learning though) and the worst way to crack a program is not to crack it (sometimes this is the best one though ;). I chose to go the second best way of cracking Hex Workshop due to one reason, it writes your entered Serial into a file called Hexworks.reg. Now what if somebody would check if this is the right serial? Well, here a little trick that only _MIGHT_ fool somebody checking your computer for pirated software. Instead of typing a serial, type *****. After cracking this program check the about box to see what I mean.
This is a very quick crack. Somehow I hope the guys from BreakPoint Software are reading this (not to jail me but) so they learn from it and make their protections harder... So, while running QuickView on the exe we find standard procedures, checking for the length of a string for example - lstrlena. We set a bpx on it and set up the program for cracking, that is start it, click on 'About..' and enter '**********'. Now we enable the breakpoint and Ctrl+D out of SoftIce again, press ENTER and - zoom - we are back in SoftIce. Press F11 to return to the caller and single step until you find the next conditional jump. This will take some time so you can also press F12 four times and from then on single step, that is faster. Change the zero flag (if you forgot how that works check some older tutorials of mine.. and REMEMBER how it works) and Ctrl+D out of SoftIce. All you have to do now to finish your registration is entering a name and a company and your done.
Well, I'm gonna stop writing tutorials on simple serial protections now because it gets boring... (I might go deeper into detail and write something about a keygenerator but I also might not do that :) I don't know what the next tutorial will be about. I have a nice little program that writes the day it was first executed to the registry but it also seems to have some kind of checksum-checking or might be encrypted... I haven't found out yet. So we'll see.
CU, Faro
Very, very special greetings to CrackZ (the one who got me started with his great tutorial) and also to Fravia+, Razzia, Frog and all other +HCU-members (I doubt that any of those people will ever read this stuff on this page and if they do they will _certainly_ not be interested in tuts like this one, but others _will_ follow), LoRdOfDeCeIpT, Dark Vampire and - of course: +ORC.
I don't call me a good reverser of software (yet), another alias of mine was MinusDMA or -DMA, but I certainly do believe that I am a good reverser of life. As +ORC tought us, only somebody that also reverses the happenings surrounding him will be able to be a good software reverser. That is actually the reason why I stayed on Fravia's page a bit longer than on other Cracking Pages when I was starting out - because I read this statement which mirrored my point of view: we get manipulated and have to try to understand how and when we do get manipulated. We also have to learn! Everything that is possible to learn! I am really glad I stayed on Fravia's page. Sometimes, I hope to fit into +ORC's view of a software reverser as much as in his view of a life reverser... even though I believe the life reversing point of view is a lot more important - and not only, as +ORC said, we can learn from our surroundings how to crack, but also can we learn from cracking how to live...
CU, again, Faro