Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!alchemy!ptavoly
From: ptavoly@cs.ruu.nl (Peter Tavoly)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: Chessamster 2100 patch - possible?
Message-ID: <1991May13.150110.10424@cs.ruu.nl>
Date: 13 May 91 15:01:10 GMT
References: <1991May06.155345.17107@cs.ruu.nl> <1991May7.002909.17186@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <1991May07.103100.12997@cs.ruu.nl> <3901@ux.acs.umn.edu>
Organization: Utrecht University, Dept. of Computer Science
Lines: 47

In <3901@ux.acs.umn.edu> mndaily@ux.acs.umn.edu (Linda Seebach) writes:
>
>>PS.: Manual protection schemes *cannot* be removed by commercial programs
>>     like Project D etc. since they are embedded in the program code itself,
>>     sometimes they are encoded as well (uhh.. from my 64 days :).
>
>Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. Back in the days before I knew
>either assembly (for any machine) or C, I could take a binary and break
>a protection scheme. It's embedded in the program itself. Oh, gee, really?
>I thought it was a shell script embedded in the startup-sequence.

Really? Hmm.. I thought it was Santa Claus! Such a nice man, isn't he?

>What you do, see, is you find the manual protection scheme (easy enough)
>and then you read through it. Somewhere, it will have two possible
>branches (most likely) - one back into the routine (the Failed case) and
>one into the rest of the program (success case). Replace the beginning
>of the routine with a branch to the rest of the program, and leave the
>rest of the routine there - it's harmless. A decent hacker can do this

A decent hacker can do it with his eyes closed, while drinking hot coco.

>in about half an hour, at most. (Admittedly, I don't know if I still
>could - high-level languages have made me lazy.) It is most certainly
>*NOT* impossible.

I did not say impossible, I said that a commercial program that does not
know *on beforehand* where the manual protection lies will most likely
not find it, unless the programmer has put a message in his code a la:
"Here I am, your friendly neighbourhood manual protection! Just change
these two pointers, and I'll be gone in a huff, never to bother you again!"

>
>> -ThomasT.
>
>--SeebS--
>(And I'm never *going* to be Linda Seebach)

 -ThomasT. (And I am never going to be Peter either, as someone quoted me
	    in this thread)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~          ____
Thomas Tavoly, Commercial Computer Science - HEAO Utrecht, NL.           / / /
"Whoever talks too much, has no time to think." - Peter Tavoly.       AMIGA /
Favourite quote: "The Mac OS is amazingly complex,               ____  / / /
 .sig v3.0e       given how little it does." - Peter da Silva    \ \ \/ / /
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~>> ptavoly@praxis.cs.ruu.nl <<~~~~~~~~~  \_\_\/_/