Introduction

"   The best way to learn cracking (i.e. understanding, broadly
individuating, locating exactly and eliminating or suspending or
deferring one or more protection schemes inside a software
application you do not possess the source code of) is to begin
your tampering experiments using OLDER applications which have
OLDER protection schemes.
   In this way you'll quickly grasp the base techniques of the
trade..."

"WHY WE CRACK
      Strange as it may seem, the reasons for cracking are very
 important for the success of our task. We (at least we old
 crackers) crack AGAINST society, and OPPOSING laws and
 conventions. We usually DO NOT crack for money or for other
 "commercial" reasons (just sometimes, and we are expensive: I
 have plenty of money already and my services are VERY expensive
 if you need aimed deprotection). But in general, we don't care
 much for money and -as you can see- I am giving away the basis
 of what I know for free with this tutorial. The programs we crack
 should be made free to everybody, even if we spent some of our
 time deprotecting them. We do not care less of the commercial
 value of a given program, not to mention the holy work of the
 ethical programmers... we program ourselves, but only because we
 LIKE it... if somebody does something only in order to gain
 money, he does not deserve anything. It's the mind challenge that
 counts, NEVER the profit! (Even if you can make good use of the
 cracked programs and even if -as I said- there is at times a
 personal profit)..."

+ORC, Lesson 2:Tools and tricks of the trade.

"A LITTLE BASIC ASSEMBLER
 In order to understand the protection schemes and to defeat them,
 you must acquire a passing knowledge of assembler, the "machine
 language" code. You can find a lot of good, well explained code
 for free: viruses are one of the best sources for good "tight and
 tricky" assembler code. You can find the source code of almost 
 all viruses on the web: oddly all the would be hackers seem to
 have an abberant passion for this kind of stuff instead of
 studying cracking techniques. But there are millions of lines of
 good explained "commercial" assembler code on the net, just fish
 it out and study it: the more you know, the better you crack..."

+ORC, Lesson 3.1:Hands on, paper protections(1)

"1. The Master is the Master: Get a Tutor. There are lots of
    crackers on the web. Convince one to be your teacher.
    My classroom is already full, please don't email me :-(
    Sorry!
 2. Education comes first: Get & Read all available Assembly
    Tutorials.
 3. Bad habits come next: Get & Read all available cracking
    tutorials.
 4. To see or not to see, that is the question: Where is the
    protection scheme? You must see it before being able to
    crack it. Locating the protection scheme is the hardest
    part of cracking. Steps two and three will help you
    accomplish this task.
 5. Destroy your enemy: Learn all techniques to defeat the
    most popular and generic protection schemes.
 6. Master your power: Turn the protection scheme to your
    advantage. This one is up to you!
 7. Spread your knowledge: Publish your work all around the
    web. Remember, maggots cannot be crackers, so don't take
    this knowledge to your tomb!"

+Aesculapius, http://aesculapius.cjb.net