Hi, RE's i think i am lost

[_InSaNe_]

As the title say i am lost.
Alright, i started as hacker, i was preaching like be a hacker, not a cracker, and suddenly i realised that i am learning nothing but stupid garbage that those buerocrats actually serving us all unconcious, and then i thought why not get my hands on cracking, and since i had a basic knowledge of 8085 assembly i started with RE, and alas, i was like going mad with lots of disassembly codes in front of me, and me getting no idea what to do, then i got hands on few cool tutorials, well thats what i thought at that time, and started it all again with w32dasm, searching for strings like "Registered" and shit, yes i was able to crack few stupid password protections, but now i am stuck at how to keygen a program rather than patch it, i am done with patching. Ok i tried softice and w32dasm and olly and hview and all, but still i cant get what and where data is being kept and changed according to algo. i know my problem is .......
well i know basic breaks like int 21 , hmemcpy, dlgitemtexta, getwindowtexta and shit, but ,.........
Can any one show me the path that so far i am not able to see. What is it that i am not doing right ?
Regards
_InSaNe_

P.S. : I found out about this forum through woodmann.com, that was the place where i got those tutorials from.

[Devine9]

You should try and take it slow. Definitely learn ASM completely and use www.crackmes.de and http://www.woodmann.com/krobar/ for resources. You can't learn to crack overnight and it takes a while before that final 'oh i see' moment comes along and you see the big picture.

Keep in mind while reading the papers and tutorials out there that many of them are written in a step by step manner with no real teaching process. So at the end sure you've cracked the example but they don't show you how you should recognize it next time it comes along or how they knew where to look. These are things you need to deduce for yourself as all exes are simply just that. When an exe compiles the same program structure exists in the asm code as was in the source so really you are just looking at the program itself. A common initial mistake with beginners is that it's expected that once you crack 1 program you just look in the same spot with another program and thats where the protection is. hmemcpy caused a lot of that with win9x cracking.

good luck and keep at it.

-DR

[_InSaNe_]

Thx
First thing first, i am not just cracking example app. in tutorials, i cracked like four applications on my own, and as u said i am also a member of crackme.de already.
Well but the point is same, all i can do is patch and i know real essence is in writing keygen, well i will try to learn steadily and slowly, may be thats what i gotta do.
Just today i was able to crack an application, an 8085 simulator program.
This program nags for floppy disk after ten usage and with installlation floppy runs over 100 times, then it expires and asks for registration.
I was able to remove floppy disk protection few months back, and then i stopped on it.
Few weeks back i was able to reverse the good jump for 100 count so it was running for unlimited times.
However for registration, program asked for reply string to a challenge string unique to machine.
I knew real cracking is to know the reply string.
Just today in fifteen minutes i patched it in a way that it takes any string and register's, but ........still i dont know whats the actual key and whats the algorithm.
when i press f12 after hmemcpy breaks on pressing register i cant get to the call subroutine for protection check.
I can submit the application with crack and documentation if anyone would like to help me out with coding of keygen.
Regards
_InSaNe_

[quitsendingmetrash]

You seem a little more advanced than me. Not sure how much this will help you out.

Go to crackmes.de and find this crackme:
crackme #1 by microplant

or direct link:
hxxp://www.crackmes.de/users/microplantmp/crackme_1_by_microplant/

This crackme is pretty simple. See if you can figure out the algo. Then code up a keygen for it. I used to not have a clue on where to start with a keygen. Probably still don't. Regardless, I wrote one for the crackme above along with my first attempt at writing a tutorial. If you get stuck maybe it can shed a little light. ( The F8's might get a little annoying, but I couldn't figure out a better way to get it out of my mind. ) I used OllyDbg.

hxxp://www.quitsendingmetrash.com/lrn/reversing/challenges/crackmes.de/crackme1Microplant/crackme1_microplant.html