Exetools and exe-scene
 

Hi All!

I see exe-scene and exe-software-releases are dying counting new posts of forum it's so small for a months.

Or just exe-scene are gone underground (private one) ?

Or Windows Vista/7 and etc are killed interest of all pe-exe-addicted people?

Remebered for example 1998 year till 2006 so many kewl releases it be.

People are loosing interest to exe-scene.... so pity...

Just my IMHO:)

the same for many other scenes .. people in the last few years either goes corporate or underground.

And I suppose due to the fact that lately attacks on protectors etc. have been highly successful and updates of these quite lame, people are losing interest..
Sadly enough it seems the crackers have the edge right now..

After they switched to VM the crackers were lagging behind a bit, but that has changed and now it seems the protector developers aren't thinking of new stuff.. Which perhaps makes everything somewhat less interesting..

Even Oreans is doing a sucky job at updating. And the new armadillo is dreadful. VMprotect perhaps is still interesting.
But well there's always new ground somewhere you just have to look harder. :)

IMHO, it dying because there're many boards with closed registration or with hard to join requirements and many things you can't get for free (like unpack.cn) and you must prove something to someone to became a cool-guy, etc

One thing I notice is that there is almost no information in public about reverse engineering the protection systems commonly used for current commercial products (those that arent simply product specific custom jobs).
For example, there is basically NO information around about the modern versions of Securom (either the dvd-based check or the newer "product activation tied to the hardware" check.

the scene is not dead .
it's still alive but much smaller then it use to be.
this is due to ppl that are much more older and stop to crack because they
are not seeing the need to do it anymore . the persones that are still active in the scene are trying to save the scene by removing the need for any leech ratio that once was to keep talented ppl in the scene.

about the protections:
there is a simple rule about any protection:
"If it can run fully once, it can run like this all the time"
it doesn't metter how much they will invest in developing new complex protections there is still this rule and they know it.
the only protections that the cracking of it is still in private are the CD protections.
about all other protections they are usually public or just not that updated but you can still lern from them to continue on your own.

Regards,
LaBBa.

Pretty much all is documented including securom, read the paper from ARteam then fill in the blanks.. (Since there are a few.) There are automatic unpackers and papers for almost all protectors, if there are not then well the protector is rare or niche..

There are no simple guides to securom due to the simple fact that it is unlikely newbie reversers will succeed with any length of tutorial. There's a to much "gimme tut to learn because else it's impossible" mentality. Tuts are to help you a bit on the way, you must connect the dots yourself. That's how you become a good cracker. You can't follow one tut and expect to be able to crack all programs protected with that tut.. You must adapt yourself.

My guess, the atractive are the innovations, when Virtual Machines appeared in exe/protectors were a nice stuff to study, but that emotion don-t last forever, some people wait until another kind of innovation.

I am going to say open source is killing reversing. There is hardly any products that do not have a legitimate open source competitor. There is no need to reverse if you have the source code and its free. Aside from this fact, it is definitely true that reversers are just getting bored. There is a lack of new protection schemes. How many times can you unpack TMD or Armadillo before you get bored? (About 5-ish?)

>I am going to say open source is killing reversing.

I suppose cracking killing shareware. All products for users should be open source. There are many other pretty ways to get money from developing programs. Technical support, documentation, etc. Model of free open source apps works fine. Developer doesn't spent a lot of time on protection, others can help him with bugs.

For example my friend is developer of small games. Early all games were shareware. He tired delete cracks from file shares. For now, all products is freeware with donate system. He works more on improving soft. He get much more money via donate model than via shareware.

Maybe it's a objective of crack scene? Free non-bugged, good open source applications.

This is technically true. But financially?

I am interested in the numbers if you can (and are willing to) share, and maybe the market segment that he is targeting.

Sorry if I go off-topic, but this discussion about marketability is really interesting.

PS: I thought I had a query about what you think could be the next big thing in exe-scene. Well, maybe it was deleted due to inappropriate discussion.

Yeah saw that question as well, found it quite appropiate and interesting.
But honestly it's hard to say.. Imho to up the ante they have to go hardware.
There's not much left in x86..

There are less people into hardware hacking than RE, so there's some gain there.. But well if they go hardware RE goes hardware as well.. So it should be a nice new round in the battle between DRM and crackers.

However I doubt it's feasible, no sane person would give up the free computer model and turn them into restrictive consoles.

I see Intel have incorporated AES encryption and key hardware into Core i7 and later.

Git

so, this will be new protections schemes in near future

As far as I can tell they're simply adding new instructions to the CPU in order to speed up AES en-/decryption...