What packer would you use
 

im just curious to know what packer,
would you guys use if you were making
a program of your own?

It depends on what you would like to obtain:

- compression ratio (UPX)

- stability and compatibility (UPX / PeCompact)

- security (AsProtect / AcProtect)


Best regards,
dyn!o

nhoj,

your own packer. even if it isnt good as upx/asprotect, peoples wouldnt be able to use ready solutions for it

vecna

About security.....

dyn!o
Asprotect is no more secure :) (after release of stripper 2.07). Version 1.3 too (because of stripper 2.11 :) ). Maybe AcProtect is more secure, because it is not so popular. But it is low security now too. :)

SVKP is good, but I found only one serious program protected with it - TweakXP 3.

Xtremeprotector is very strong but it has a big minuses - 1) heavy code 2) rebooting if some debugger/decompiler dectected.

Other packers/cryptors are less secure.

Well, guys... I didn't want to learn anyone.

Anyway, let's see:

1. Own packer/crypter.
Developing own packer/crypter takes months. Even if you develop yourself an crypter within 6 months it will be easy to skip/unpack. To develop strong crypter you need minimum 2-3 persons and 1 year. And what? And I am still able to unpack it. So, where is the point of such a work?

2. AsProtect is no more secure.
That's interesting. With all respect to your skills and knowledge I bet you were always using Stripper and never unpacked AsProtect manually. Believe me, it is very good protector and if Alexy change few bytes then Stripper won't work and you wouldn't be able to quickly unpack it (I'm only assuming).

3. SVKP is good.
That's another interesting sentence. Probably you didn't saw the latest unpacker for SVKP.

4. AsProtect is more secure because of less popularity.
I propose to unpack latest Oxygen PM then (as a training).


Best regards,
dyn!o

no body has said fsg, smallest packer ever?
~190 byte loader this thing rocks

@r3L4x

h**p://protools.anticrack.de/unpackers.htm ;)

Mamma mia where can i download stripper 2.11(i only know 2.07) :eek:

I read on woodmann forums that some tools(especially Asprotect) are not for public use. Why are u teasing me ;)

h**p://www.woodmann.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1124

Regards,

Armadillo, SVKP or Obsidium.

Still have to check (don't have money now to buy them) PC Guard V5, Ac Protect and XTreme Protector.

UPX, ExeStealth and AS Products are no more secure...at the moment exists unpackers for all versions.

There are other protections that seems to be not used bu authors.

SMARTE Secure (Ex-Softlocx/Titanium)
Interlock (only used by Installshield)
Software-Shield
Visual Protect

Do someone has informations?

Anyway I am trying to develop some applications and currently I do like this:

Upx+Aspack+PC Guard 4.10 OR
Upx+Aspack+Armadillo
Upx+Aspack+SVKP
Upx+Aspack+Obsidium

Then i modify sections names(if present, cause the first case strips away all names) just to mess up some things.

Anyway I program as a hobby....try to do the best but just as a hobby....so protecting is needed only to try to exactly know who is using when and what, not for earning a lot of money.

Anyway I protect each program with different protection systems so a "serial cracking" (mean all in one) of my programs is not possible and use a totaly different serial scheme for each product. But as i said before is only to track uses of my program.

UNPACKER FOR SVKP? I DON'T THINK IT EXISTS...

IF IT DOES, BUT I DON'T THINK SO, PROVIDE IT TO ME SO I CAN TEST ON MY PROGRAMS :eek:

ferrari why not go strait to the source? its in polish or somthing tho
_http://woodmann.com/bart/xt/

i dont use fsg for the protecting purposes, i use it because it will actually touch programs < 3kb which ive never seen a packer do, and thats pretty much the only kind i make.

isnt that a good thing for security if somebody loads a debugger, then it will reboot? wont it make it slightly harder for the unpacker?

thanks guys for answering my first question.

next question on similar basis, can you use 2 packers on one program or would it not work?

also, if you had a packer, any packer doesnt matter which one, for example fsg or upx if you hex edited the code slightly, and the packer still worked, would that mean the person trying to unpack the program might not be able to do so using a normal unpacking program? would they have to do it manually?

sometimes you could use two protectors/packers on 1 program, but its just stupid and really doesnt add any security.

yes you can modify a packer to make it maybe harder to detect in PEiD/Foil Some Generic Unpackers, a generic oep cryptor was posted a while back that would do something like that, although it was quite unstable. It really wouldnt make programs any harder to unpack tho..

In regards to Xprotector, keep in mind you'll be rebooting your customers PC and the crackers PC so in the end your no farther ahead cause no one will want to buy your software. Altho to be fair to Xprotector, its optional if it reboots your PC or not but in any event programs run so slowly protected with it its useless.

Hi

Why some mix beteween soft role?

UPX / FSG / ASPack /PECompack : COPRESSOR only.

Olthers: ASProtect / Armadillo / ACProtect / SVK prot / Xtreem Protector / Obsidium : Protector.

and i do believe that ASProtect is the best if USED the right way....
there is also Good/new idea in Xprotector....

just a newbie comment..

Regards

dyn!o
My friend has written a nice protector & want to make it shareware and release it. He was making it a less than month.

dyn!o
quote:
I bet you were always using Stripper and never unpacked AsProtect manually

You are lose! :D I'm always use brains&hands when Stripper won't work.

ferrari
quote:
where can i download stripper 2.11

It is a private tool at this moment. Maybe some later it will be public.

nhoj
quote:
isnt that a good thing for security if somebody loads a debugger, then it will reboot? wont it make it slightly harder for the unpacker?

No. It is not a good thing!!! What if i am a programmer, and write a drivers & debug them. I HAVE to use SoftIce (or same thing). And I take a programm(protected with Xtreme) and run it... What?! What a sh#t! My computer is down! Is this good?

I do not recomment to use 2 or more packers/cryptors to one file. The exe-file may be corrupted or unstable after that (I had some examples).

[QUOTE=mc707]
My friend has written a nice protector & want to make it shareware and release it. He was making it a less than month.


Release it...

I cant release it, because it is HIS protector. I'll tell him your request, and if it say yes, he will release it, but only alpha version (other versions will be shareware).

He will be offline on 2 days, and I may release only crackme, packed with his protector.
quote by -=ALEX=-
I've decide to make a crackme today. Try to unpack it, but you may also make an in-line patch, loader :) as you wish. BUT unpacking would be better !!!


Try it :)

Code-Lock
 

I see this protector has not been broken for the past 3 year :eek:
Is it really unbreakable or is there a private tool. Maybe not, coz i read somewhere there is reward of $2000 :cool:
h**p://rtsoftware.org/

Regards,

ferrari
quote
I see this protector has not been broken for the past 3 year
Is it really unbreakable or is there a private tool. Maybe not, coz i read somewhere there is reward of $2000

First, u dont understand me, i think. This protector (in crackme) named AlexProt 0.41. It was written a month ago. Crackme was written on the march 24 2004.
Second, it is not unbreakable. Russian crackers-friends discussed this crackme (there: cracklab.fastbb.ru /only on russian/ ) right after it was released. Two days and it was broken - h__p://www.mario555.pisem.net/Unpacked.rar (for example. other links are already dead).
Third, what protector are you talking about? Maybe we will get this $2000. =))))

Hi,
I guess u didn't understand me ;) I'm talking about "codelok" and not "AlexProt 0.41"

Go try breaking codelok--> h**p://rtsoftware.org/ and get the reward and don't forget me ;)

I respect the Russian brainpower...very intelligent people :)

Regards,

Oh, I see, sorry :) .

Nothing unusual. It is a strong cryptoalgorythm.
Thanks for the compliment.

only lame loader

an0nymous
Yeah. It is a very lame loader :))

BTW. If u writing a loader, u can change one jump and you will get the "GOODBOY" message (on russian :) because it was maked for russian people)

well i got no idea how it work..maybe thats a reason why i do that..

when i got some time i try explore into, thanx for info

@ nhoj

See if u find this article interesting

just unpacked that Alex-crackme2.
fun thing..
btw, h__p://www.mario555.pisem.net/Unpacked.rar gives bad rar-archive.

ya, forgot..
this protector sux..
it's like Yado's Krypton / (DIV) 4.

Sorri:)

evaluator

Hmm..
Fun thing and sux thing are different things.
Use what u like.

ya, forgot
Krypton sux...

wow..code lock looks impressive!
its funny, you see all these cracking groups try it but they fail and TSRh didnt even try!
but the only reason its uncrackable (so far) is the way it protects, through the source code! Ive never seen this method with an activex component before, tricky tricky!!

>>Fun thing and sux thing are different things.
nop, it funny sux:)

exactly, it loads imports from saved are, while it forgot to strip original imoprt!!
Stupidly-funny-sux:))

AlexProt=Krypton/4. (or more)

Thanks for the article ferrari, hopefully it will be very useful.

evaluator
quote
exactly, it loads imports from saved are, while it forgot to strip original imoprt!!
Stupidly-funny-sux:))


He said that he forgot to fix it :D :D :p

ya, i also did a loader.

well... got nuttin to do this night, i'ma get my hands on it just to get some stuff to unpack.
Yeah y'all know, i gotta feed Olly at least twice a week, it's my little pupet :D

Don't believe the hype...
 

Code-Lock is *very* lame. By it's very nature it is either very secure or not secure at all. I know that sentence doesn't make much sense, but let me explain.

In the sense of the 'rigged' contest, it is near impossible to crack it. If you have a purchased app protected with this and a serial it couldn't be easier.

Basically (as I remember - it has been a long time since I have seen it), it works by bundling a shareware version of your app and the registered version in a .DAT file which is really a slightly modified encrypted ZIP archive.

Bruteforcing the challenge .DAT will be rather difficult due to the password length, but anyone who has a valid serial for an app protected with this crap will be able to unpack it in no time. No doubt the archive encryption key is included in the serial.

As it is aimed at the typical Visual Basic programmer, no app protected by it is of much interest to anyone around here. Even with the author's previous goading (yes, he reads this forum), it has never really captured anyone's attention.

If the author is reading this, your 'failure' list is false - I know of nobody who has taken up your rigged challenge. Asking people to participate and them ignoring you does not count! :p

Provide a protected app *with valid serial* and see how long it lasts. Security through obscurity is really no security at all. Lamer! :rolleyes:

Dzg.


Oh yeah, all text within this reply is (c) to myself so the author cannot use it for ANY purpose. I don't want to be misquoted on his stupid site E.G. 'it is near impossible to crack it'.

I had just recently taken a look at Code Lock and came up with the same conclusion, its challenge just a clever marketing campaighn which doesnt seem to have worked to well. The fact its zipped is rather obvious as it has zlib.dll which needs to be included with your application, for Visual Basic its next to useless as through various means someone can get a valid key and as you said decrypt the real exe. The only thing that slightly intrigued me about it was its use with .net, as I havent seen a .net protector with a encrypted section feature (there could be others I havent looked far and wide).

Hi Danzing,
Thnx for this expert opinion. Since i'm only 3 months old in this RE world i can't make any such opinions. I do surf great informative RE forums like Woodmann, Exetools, Anti-crack to gain knowledge from experts. I read on woodmann and anticrack about this so called Code-lok protector. I observe that no one will post any detail comments on this protector.So thats why i posted it here on exetools. We can see so many topics on ASPR and Armadillo. But this one codelok is always overlooked. So after visitng the authors website i concluded that this one is really unbreakable and the author boast of a countup on his homepage..lol. But after reading ur post i'm convinced that the reason for this is that there is no app protected by this protector to give it a shot! Like there are so many ASPR'd targets. For a moment i thought that the stereotype, "Every software protection is breakable with a good brain and patience", has been defeated by this Code-lok. But i'm glad to know that it's just another hoax :p

Regards,