Exetools  

Go Back   Exetools > General > General Discussion

Notices

 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
  #10  
Old 08-19-2016, 12:22
TechLord TechLord is offline
Banned User
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: 10 Steps Ahead of You
Posts: 759
Rept. Given: 384
Rept. Rcvd 247 Times in 112 Posts
Thanks Given: 789
Thanks Rcvd at 2,022 Times in 571 Posts
TechLord Reputation: 200-299 TechLord Reputation: 200-299 TechLord Reputation: 200-299
Quote:
Originally Posted by mudlord View Post
Well, I remember when groups like Vitality, Reloaded and Hatred made a big deal about loaders, and preferring full unpacks/VM rebuilds back in the days...And that releases were nuked for being loaders/inlines.

I guess people don't care about standards anymore and that anything goes?
As far as I could see, the loaders and inlines had two main problems and those were the main reasons that they were not preferred when alternative solutions like unpacking/patching existed. The reasons being :

1. Loaders and inlines are not guaranteed to work on ALL the (even same platform like Windows') OSes as sometimes the APIs are different/not available and also some features like relocs/ASLR may be different/non-existent in some versions of the OSes.

One example I can think of, is that the OLD method of inlining Armadillo (older versions, not the newer version by the AKT tool) sometimes breaks on Windows 8 x64 when it works perfectly upto Win 7 !

2. Sometimes loaders requires privileges on the platform, that the USER running it may not be possessing (eg Administrator privileges). This is avoided by using actual patches/unpacked app...

But I see some advantages also with using loaders :

Far more control over your app especially when made CUSTOMIZED, rather than from a generic loader creator.

Also, especially when carefully customized, one loader made in the form of Search-and-Replace (SAR) can work for multiple versions of the same app very non-intrusively - therefore preferred for GAMES where there are MINOR but MANY builds/modifications very frequently but not feasible to create a working unpack EVERYTIME nor to create a SAR patcher !

Having said that , I am always for :

1. Keygenning - ie COMPLETE owning of the app
2. UNPACK and Patch
3. Loader
4. Inline patching

in the decreasing order of preference, based on the time take for and feasibility of going for each option !
Reply With Quote
 

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off



All times are GMT +8. The time now is 23:07.


Always Your Best Friend: Aaron, JMI, ahmadmansoor, ZeNiX, chessgod101
( Since 1998 )