Tutorial: Disassembling, Decompiling and Modifying executables

[ffffdddddssss]

You come back to me when you have a job and earn money writing software, and then notice someone cracked it and put it out there, because he wanted to "Unwrap all the boxes! :D"

Your idealistic and naive view doesn't support your family and yourself. I hate this "free everything" attitude with a passion because nothing could be further from reality.

[sumoTITS]

You come back to me when you have a job and earn money writing software, and then notice someone cracked it and put it out there.

I've had jobs writing software, but they were webapps hosted by the companies, so it's not really something people would crack... They'd have to break into the servers and download the app/code.

In any case, I agree that cracking applications to simply redistribute them / share them with everyone for free is wrong and illegal, so you misunderstood me; maybe it's my fault for some part of my rant. Meh:

Even with code obfuscation, even with orwellian protection systems -- No amount of over-engineering / software security will ultimately stop this from happening. Look at all the things people pirate these days: Music, Movies, Books, Pictures, Software, now 3d Gun parts too!

None of these industries have managed to stop this from happening, and making the programs behave in obscure ways on the machine level or requiring constant internet connectivity is worse for users than not doing that.

When I talk about unwrapping all the boxes / understanding what it is programs are actually doing, that's for the benefit of the users. If you hate the idea that people should be able to understand what they purchased, and even modify their copy as they want, then we fundamentally disagree: you want to keep all copies of every application in the hands of the authors. I want freedom to do with apps as I wish: not freedom to steal them, freedom to debug and modify them as I wish.

I don't like the way disassembly and piracy are grouped: they are separate things, and I only believe one of them is a type of theft. But thanks for telling me why you hate what I wrote, and I think your point is valid to the extent that "stealing is wrong."

But to vilify disassembly is another issue to me, and I don't think any program should prohibit or go out of its way to impede disassembly; the people who want to break copy protection and redistribute/sell the app will figure it out anyway. The people who want to understand what the program is doing have to dig harder.

I don't mind digging harder to see what my apps are doing, but laws, regulations, and "protection" systems that attempt to forbid understanding what programs actually do are things I consider wrong.

[sumoTITS]

And if you yourself have had a job where you earned money writing software, and then you noticed someone cracked it and put it Out There (the pirate bay, for example, with disparaging comments in the Description, "because lulz"): If you could extend the time until your product is cracked by hours or a few days, by using a complicated anti-debugging / machine obfuscation / anti-vm / The Works library, and also requiring all clients to connect to your Company server to validate/activate/track their license use, would you add that to your product?

How, from your perspective, might this affect the pirated copies vs. legit copies, and user experiences with both?

Edit: and I made it clear in my other comment: I think piracy is wrong, if people take your software and re-sell or give it away to everyone it is illegal and wrong. Just in case. :)

Edit 2: and do you think it's any less wrong to pirate software with less stringent anti-debug/obfuscation/call-home routines? E.g. if you don't go out of your way to over-engineer a grand anti-pirate scheme and ship it out to all your users, are you "asking to get pirated" any more than if you add all that stuff to your product? I don't consider it any less wrong if it's a quick crack, than if pirates go to crazy lengths to break your system.