StarForce protection
 

Hi,

I plan to protect my game with the StarForce protection system. I understand some programs could stand uncracked for long times with that protection. Though I don't know how much that protection is beaten at the moment. Do anybody know about a recent game that is protected with StarForce and is not cracked yet? Thank you,

Geza

If you search the forum you'll find a very nice discussion we had about the use of Starforce and how is the "correct" implementation of it.
Splinter Cell 3 took almost 8 months since its release to the market to be cracked and it was using Starforce (not only the packer).
If you deeply implement the Starforce protection in your game, you may be "safe" for a couple of months.There is a small-to-big performance hit (specially at the startup of the game,to much loading time), depending on the protection tricks you're going to use, but you don't have to worry much about it.

All that can to be runned will be cracked. There is no Uncrackable protection's.
Starforce use Ring0 based on Protect.dll, that mean's that you can't debug it with ring3 debugger's (Olly, etc). But all ring0 protection's (like "Xtreme Protector"), if you know, is often unstable on different PC's configuration's and may crush user system. So you can decide yourself use or not this protector.
PS: MS is restrict all action's, like Ring0 protection's, in there system kernel, and I think that soon using protector's, like this will be illegal.
Try to test your game protected with SF under the StarFuck sometimes this tool can bypass this protection.

MS is not going to restrict anything at all.MS was FORCED to open the kernel source to competitive companies, so there is no way for them to "lock" in anyway the ring0 drivers.If it does something like that (it won't but anyway) gfx card drivers and similar stuff, will be useless, as most of their drivers are ring0 drivers.It doesn't make sense :) And Xtreme protector is too old to be an example for "unstabillity".

star force is bad solution for your game,
i copy star force with alcohol 120% with no problem.
use (bad sectors) or somthing like that to protect your game.
or go here http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_protections.shtml
and find everithing your need about cd-dvd protections

theres a program @ gamerscopyworld called SD 4 Protector, on the UI it give u an options 2 hide virutal drives, doing so allows you to play SF protected games with a virtual emulator such as DT

Yes, you may be able to use some 1:1 Copy programs, but that doesn't work in all Starforce protected games.As i said Splinter Cell took 6-7 months to be able to be copied and played with Daemon-Tools or no CD etc etc..Starforce did it job very well,the game was awesome and it was running smoothly on every single pc.
It depends on the implementation of the protection on your game/program and how "deeply" you intergrate the "protection" in your code using the SDK from the protector/packer etc.
You can't judge a protection because some games have poor implementation of it (Like Silent Hunter II).

PS. Let me make something clear so i won't be misunderstood.I'm not supporting any kind of protection or i'm not on anyone's side.I just don't like saying that something is crappy because someone doesn't know how to use it right.We all know that something that is locked, it can be unlocked somehow..The purpose of these protections is how long is going to take until it is unlocked, in the case of Starforce it did it job very well.

when i see all the games that came out 'starforce' protected and never [properly] cracked...if you implement it well,as above posted,your game is safe for a while...

clone,1:1 and removing cdrom plug is not a proper crack..

Clone 1:1 - with new StarForce or Securom or Safedisc is very,very hard.
Maybe only in Plextor PX-716A - firmware 1.03db and 1.13db by Dangerous Brothers or BENQ DW-1640 - firmware BSJBand and media PLATINUM 52X PHILIPS 52X FUJIFILM 52X SONY 48X a TDK 52X with the "Patcher Tool".
In new SF the protectinon control the maximum autentifikation with the original CD.
Read the essay by MiRROR.
Good Luck ;)

heh we are talking here about online distributed game, and not CD distribution :D
from : http://community.reverse-engineering.net/viewtopic.php?t=4815

Thank you deroko for clarifying this. Yes, I am planning to bind the game to the hardware of the computer and not to the disk.

As far as I know most of the disk bound StarForce protections use the hardware bound protection as well. And when you call customer support saying your disk is damaged, they can send you an activation code in response to the hardware code the program generates.

Can you circumnavigate the hardware binding protection by a general way as the disk protections can be tricked many times?

Thanks for tall the answers!

As always, it depends the way the hardware code are collected. Being StarForce a r0 protection, probably hardware codes are directly fetched from IDE interface, thus making it harder to 'fake' (I've read *F initially was harder to fuck, requiring to disconnect IDE CD to force it to use 'compatibility' drivers, Mostly the DT one I think). r3 protections are, on this side, easier to attack since they often rely on DeviceIOControl API for evaluating the serial (at least, the 'HW_ID' routines I examined does do).

I hate SF, the only hassle free way to beat it is to use the newest version of Daemon Tools and unplug your ide drive from your DVD drive. This has worked for me 100% everytime.

I have another query about SF - i hear that they probably used Kozlowski - Riedmann crypto - is it true ? Do you have some information about this algo?

I have some news, people at StarForce (Russia) are doing a stupid thing. They're threatening to sue boingboing.net (owned by a Canadian blogger)
hxxp://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/31/starforce_threatens_.html
for a post describing StarForce as a malware.

The fun is that A Russian informs a Canadian living in London that he's alerted the American federal crime bureau (FBI) to his "harassment." :)

Slashdot.net has good comments on this, hxxp://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/31/1721241&from=rss.

There is also a site persuading gamers to boycott StarF*ck
hxxp://www.glop.org/starforce/

Oh dear, there are lots of action in that last post :) Thanks ttn13 ;)