Armadillo questions?
 

What is the Armadillo protection system? How does it work?

How does Skamer from Dream Team break Armadillo protection system? Is this implementation failure? Or is this weak cryptography algorithm used in Armadillo?

Where can I know more details about Armadillo protection system?

Why not goto the Armadillo website and read there propaganda? If you want to learn about it theres tuts on unpacking it, releases of it etc.

No other grp other than dT has ever keygenned Armadillo to my knowlege and there not to willing to say how they did it, as that wold be a give away to Chad and the rest of the Arma Developers.

ManSun, you can find more information on Armadillo's forum: http://support.siliconrealms.com/

But
 

but, there are only general uselesness informations...;-/

ManSun,

I don't think it's a matter of weak cryptographic algorithm. Software protection against cracking has not much to do with cryptographic algorithms....my sister, without cryptographic knowledge, could wait till the program is decrypted in memory and user LordPE do dump the decrypted program in memory :)

About the rest of your question...maybe you should give more details about what you want to know exaclty, and not asking that general question that could be answer in Armadillo's help ;)

What cryptography algorithms does use Armadillo and what keys a dyn!o and other talking about??? (Skamer made keygenerators for Armadillo, but he didin't dump decrypted parts from memory....my brother ;>)

Hi there!

"I don't think it's a matter of weak cryptographic algorithm."
Well, keygenerating relies in the most part in the cryptography but the software protection itself doesn't have to deal with cryptography only and it's rather about anti-***, anti-*** etc. stuff.

What I want to say?
I mean that Armadillo keygeneration was caused only by a silly bug which was now solved (I am still very surprsied why so late).

What algo Arma uses?
ECC.

What that gives us?
Nothing beacause this time the settings and binary material were carefully chosen so don't waste your time brothers.

Does that make Armadillo uncrackable?
No, it makes it unkeygenable ;)


Good luck,
dyn!o

to peleon
 

with all my respects, in armadillo with copymem2, if you wait till program is full decrypted in memory you wait eternally, never is full decypted in memory, the father process copy only 1000 bytes in the child process, execute this 1000 bytes and erase this 1000 bytes, copy other 1000 bytes execute and erase, never the target is full decrypted, the solucion is force the farher decrypt all and next beggining to execute, but is not a work for my sister, jeje is a hard work, and next you can fight with the nanomites, when you have the full program dumped, not run by nanomites (INT3), the jmps of the original program was replaced by INT3, and you can determine, what jump are (conditional or jmp) if jump or not jump ,and where jump, if you put your sister to make this work, you are a bad brother, jeje.

Ricardo

lol, point taken. I wont make my sis do it :)

Thanks for any information! :)

Yes dump program in memeory is hard-work because it is many antycracking-trick (anty-dissasembler, anty-debugger, anty-trace, dummy-opcodes, relocation, embedded-code and other)
easier is carded program but is not the same :cool:

hehehe, thanks for the info Ricardo and for being so kind with sisters :p

Well, I was talking a bit about software protection in general. I read in a forum that one shareware author was asking why programs can be cracked when you have unbreakable cryptographic algoritms out there. Many programmers don't realise that to crack a program you dont need to have knowledge about cryptographic, just use other simpler ways (dump, rebuild IAT...). So, the shareware author was talking about his posibilities of programming a cryptographic algorithm in his program and that was the perfect software protector against cracking in general. (he was far from the reality :))

perfect
 

i understand, and you have reason.

Sorry for my bad english.

Ricardo Narvaja

If one uses the cryptographic process to protect certain functions in the software, which will not decrypt, and therefore not operate unless the proper code is entered and they have used a strong encryption "properly", it is not likely that one can get a fully functioning software unless one is capable of writing the missing elements. While this depends on the proper choice of the functions to protect, it is a fairly effective protection system. The problem is that the shareware software vendors seem not to impliment these features in their programs. This is a common problem of those who fail to use asprotect to its full potential. While I'm less familiar with the choices offered arma users, I would suspect that they,also, often fail to use its capabilities to their full potential, leaving aside the issue of the incorrect implimentation of the earlier cryptographic systems which was actually arma's error.

Regards,

Hi JMI,

Yes, you are right and that's a good way to protect. Though that protection way is not applicable to all kind of software (like when you have to release a COMPLETE version of your program but with trial limits). Anyway, shareware authors can do a lot more from his source code like that encryption scheme that you talked about....Programmers seem very lazy for that and they just complain when it's cracked in a few days :)

As a general rule, the only way to actually protect a trial software is to NOT make it complete. If you make it complete and give a timelimit, some enterprising cracker is going to figure out how to remove the time limit. Afterall, it has to have a check stored somewhere. Even having it check the software companies computer can be tricked. If one can keep the debugger running and has enough patience, it can be found and defeated.

Again, just a general observation.

Regards,

Peleon: "shareware authors can do a lot more from his source code like that encryption scheme that you talked about"

Very, very, very wrong my friend. First of all shareware and commercial authors have no clue how crackers work and which tools they use. Even if some of them know what tools crackers use then it would take them long years to defeat them (tools) and every day new tools are developed. I saw a lot of protected software in which the protection was "messed" and doubled sever times - for me it was obvious that it tooks a lot of time to design and test it but usually it took me no more than 20 minutes to defeat them, not because I am masta cracka but because the protection was not tested (by crackers). Tell an company to implement 1000 protections in their software and that won't change the fact that it would take few minutes to break it.

What are the best protections?
The one made by crackers - it is and will be a rule, always. Look at PeLock, Obsidium, AsProtect, AcProtect, etc. - they were made by crackers and beat every dongle and own commercial/shareware protections.

About JMI idea.
I agree totally. I will give you (Peleon) an example:

1. I am protecting an app.
2. I am crypting the code between 401234 - 404321 with my private RSA-1024 key.
3. Now I am generating hardware dependent licence files for every my customer which is connected with HDID+PubKey.
4. The software will run only with the proper key.

How would you crack the sofware without LEGAL key bought for YOUR machine? If you won't buy the key - It's impossible. As you see carefully implemented software protection based on a cryptography gives you a lot better protection. Add some anti-*, anti-* and you have the strongest possible protection. Remember: the most simpliest ideas are the most strongest.

Peleon: I don't want to learn or beat you. With all respect to your person (skilled for sure) I'm probably a little older man and that's why I've allowed myself to take a word in this discussion. Please learn from it and don't get offended.

I left all the coments for you guys... It's very deep topic...
dyn!o

Hi dyn!o, of course, not offended here ;) Thanks a lot for the information. Indeed, lots to think about this subject cos it looks promising

Didnt know that Alexey (asprotect) was a cracker :D

Regards

Yesterday I thought I know much. Today I think I knew very little. Tomorrow I will be sure I didn't knew anything.

Think about it :).
dyn!o

I'm old enough to have learned that I have alot to learn. :D

Regards,

The word of a old cracker
 

I think is resumed in this:


If the program (or part of a program) run in my machine (one time, two times, n times), is always crackeable, if not run in my machine can be crackeable or not, and will be very difficult.
I think ORC say this (is not literal or exact)
Ricardo Narvaja

That's the point.