Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!shelby!polya!kaufman From: kaufman@polya.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Copy protection disabling Message-ID: <9729@polya.Stanford.EDU> Date: 5 Jun 89 05:34:25 GMT References: <2700@nmtsun.nmt.edu> <46100307@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> Sender: Marc T. Kaufman Reply-To: kaufman@polya.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) Organization: Stanford University Lines: 24 In article <46100307@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes: ->I bought a program called vision from a company called opcode for music ->sequencing, it is copy protected and I usually stear clear of such ->things but this program is too good to not have and I know of no other ->tool for the job that fits my needs so well. >Anybody who buys copy protected software deservers what they get. Well, yes,... but if you REALLY want to crack the copy protection buy MacNosy by Jasik Designs. It's not cheap, but it's really good at helping you disassemble code so you can figure out where to patch things. There is also a cute little FKEY that will write out all code resources it finds, presumably after they have been loaded and unprotected. Between the two of them, I'm sure you (if you are a good hacker) can undo the copy protection. It can take a couple of days, especially if they tried to do silly things like patch the segment loader to decrypt the code as it is loaded, or scramble the jump table, or modify code on the fly (so that an inserted breakpoint screws up the modification), or... Given the existence of MacNosy, I don't know why companies even bother to try to copy-protect programs. Marc Kaufman (kaufman@polya.stanford.edu)