ActiveM***

Hi,

I'm trying to unpack a target protected by ActiveMark v2.7 and I am running into similar problems others were having.

What I have managed to do so far is make a dump, get the imports using ImpRec, fix the imports in the dump. However, when I try to run the dump it crashes (yes, more work needed). Edit: By crashes I mean that the process just exits, no error message, nothing.

The problem is, that when I try to run the original exe through Olly, it gives me a lot of access violations among other things and simply refuses to get to the stage of the browser window.

I believe I have found the right OEP value and have followed the initial steps, but I can't get far enough when running the exe through the debugger to stop at the right breakpoints. I do have the HideDebugger plugin and I have enabled all of the options.

Here is the important section of the dumped exe:

00BF85A0  5C 54 72 79 6D 65 64 69  \Trymedi
00BF85A8  61 20 53 79 73 74 65 6D  a System
00BF85B0  73 5C 41 63 74 69 76 65  s\Active
00BF85B8  4D 41 52 4B 20 53 6F 66  MARK Sof
00BF85C0  74 77 61 72 65 5C 00 00  tware\..
00BF85C8  54 64 6E 41 BD 5A 1F 3E  TdnA½Z>
00BF85D0  9E 86 8F 00 AA 32 11 00  ž†?.ª2.
00BF85D8  60 BA 14 00 FC 07 00 00  `º.��..
00BF85E0  39 30 65 39 62 31 64 32  90e9b1d2
00BF85E8  63 34 63 38 35 61 65 36  c4c85ae6
00BF85F0  37 35 66 31 38 32 32 33  75f18223
00BF85F8  34 35 33 33 39 39 37 33  45339973

I have been using the value 0x001132AA as the OEP.


Can anyone help?

Thanks.

Originally Posted by noobzilla

I believe I have found the right OEP value and have followed the initial steps, but I can't get far enough when running the exe through the debugger to stop at the right breakpoints. I do have the HideDebugger plugin and I have enabled all of the options.

AM using SMC - tracing is s*it and lengthy.

Hi all !
Please, let me tell you something about trymedla. There is no need to rebuild anything to crack an application 'protected' with this layer.
I suceeded in cracking recently this (over 600Mo) game : Sec0nd 5ight.
This target is available to dowbload as a 15 min. demo.
Protected by trym*dia, it could be broken with only a few bytes changing in the original file.
Trace into the proggy until you reach the nagscreen saying 'xx min letf' or 'time out : now buy the game !'.
Then, try to break just after you return from that screen.
Then, using F10, just try to find a stupid and simple test EAX,EAX + JZ/ZNZ.

If you reverse the jump, the game starts.
Try to find back the routine which has been called just before this JZ/JNZ test.
Put a breakpoint onto this routine.
Close the proggy and start it again.
What happened ? Softice break at your breakpoint.
You are right in the 'LICENSE testing routine'. It returns 1 if GOOD or 0 if BAD.
If you want to reverse-engineer this, just do it : obfuscating is only a bit annoying... not really a big deal.
There is no intergrity check in this protection, then, you can include a modifying code just after decompression routine to modify the result from License check.

No more bad protection on these proggies.

have fun... bye !
frip.

[MEPHiST0]

hi everyone

recently i downloaded a 'trial version' of a video game.
the video game is complete tho, the only trial is ActiveMark protection.

i wanna play this game
so i spent some time on it last night and took some notes for everyone..

1: Debug check..
The EXE add's a command line to the exe if there is a debugger detected..
(how the debug detection works im not sure)

Load in Olly, set a memory on write on SECOND .TEXT section (mines 5f2000), now follow the address of the second text section in teh dump window.. now Shift+F9 once, and wait for it to Break, once it breaks.. you will see this below:
MOV ECX,.005F3020 ; ASCII " --MPRMMGVA--"
this added command line is what stops the game from launching any further.

at the beginning of the second text section (005F2000)
is where the command line.. "c:/Games/thisgame" --MPRMMGVA--" is.
(if you shift+f9 acouple more times you will see this appear in the begiinning of 2nd text section)
simply from memory, in the dump window, ERASE the --MPRMMGVA-- either from the address from ECX or at the beginning of 2nd .text section.

it seems the first time i bypassed this debugger, it allows me to run the exe without fixing the debug check everytime... so once you fix it the first time, it should be fixed forever in your olly as long as u have the .udd file

2.) FAKE OEP.. or second layer OEP..
PEiD came very handy at this point, using PEID Generic OEP finder.. scan the exe and get the OEP with PEiD.. this is the second layer OEP.. (if you leave that memory on write on .text, and set a hardware break on the 2nd layer OEP... you will break there..)
the second layer is nothing special.. it has the Trial Info and stuff..

if you execute from the 2nd layer OEP.. you will get the 'you have 200 minutes remaining' Notice. (UNLESS you are executing from dumped EXE.. then a certain long jump in a CALL under the first GetModuleHandleA in the second layer EP.. if you change this long JE to JNE then the dump will launch)

if you look from teh second layer EP.. down just alittle, under GetModuleHandleA there is a CALL.. this call takes us thru 2 Process's
1 - Trial stuff
2 - JUMP to OEP

notes: at OEP, there seem to be some Redirected API CALLS
the redirected API CALLS are not too difficult to find.

I Might work on a OLLY SCRIPT to fix the redirected API CALLS,
otherwise heres how i started to fix them:

at real OEP.. i search 401000 for: "90 E8" without qoutes, setting a breakpoint on every one i find..
it seems ALL the Redirected API have NOP instruction before the redirected CALL.. so they are easy to find

this is all the info i have right now..

ill write a tutorial for this protector if i succeed with unpacking it..
all i have left to do is find the rest of redirected API

good luck, see you all soon.

Thank you Mephisto for these informations (in many ways, it's exactly what I've seen when tracing into this protection).
Nevertheless, I'm still thinking that creating a few bytes patch to crack tr*media is :
1 - simpler for lazy people like me
2 - a lot smaller result than a complete rebuilt exe (5 or 6 kb vs many Mb)

This way, It could be possible to make an 'pretty simple' automated tool to crack 'every' application protected by the last version of this protection.


once more, thanx.
frip.

I never investigated the ripped API's since one could simply launch the app from the second layer EP, but that signature you talk about (having the NOP's and then a call into ripped API) sounds a lot like how Ultraprotect worked.

Should be possible to make a ImpREC plugin for this, simply scan for calls into high mem (easy to do) and decode where they go. However, not sure if that's possible only because I never looked at a ripped API. (I didn't bother, only dumped at second EP to let it decode for me)

-Lunar

[MEPHiST0]

yea dumping at the 2nd layer EP.. or licence layer EP... is probly the best..

i dumped at the 2nd EP.. and my game runs, with the trial stuff.. i patched the trial stuff to just run the game....
all the fake CALLS are working ok...
but the exe is still messd up from somthin, cause it is crashing, all my targets are crashing, just minor stuff, almost got one fixed completly, everytime i fix somthin, somthin else is broke.. :|

but ive yet to get a completly unpacked exe.. i cant code much so coding a pluggin for imprec is outa the question

although i did some research on teh fake calls..
not ONLY are some CALLS faked.. jump dwords to API are faked as well.. inbetween FF25 there is 90E8xxxxxx
but they are all simular..
(in my dumped at OEP.. the fake calls dont execute the right code, due to a long jump in every fake code process)
in mine, all the fake calls take me to a CALL DWORD.. to GetModuleFileNameA..
then a bit after this is the API that it really fucked... (but in dumped at OEP this real API doesnt get executed because of a long jump)

mm still yet to play my gamewithout trial :|