The term u r looking for is CRACKER, my friend, not hacker. Hackers do good things, not bad. Anyone who breaks into a computer or program illegally is a cracker, not a hacker. Ok, I think I''ve made myself clear

If you code it, they will come...

Commander M
http://commanderm.8m.com
cmndrm@commanderm.8m.com

I really hate the usage of the term "hacker" in the popular world. Cracker, Phreaker, etc. are more appropriate terms...a hacker is basically someone like you and me.

P h a n t a s m
"Through dreams I control mankind."
--Legend

quote: Original post by Phantasm

I really hate the usage of the term "hacker" in the popular world. Cracker, Phreaker, etc. are more appropriate terms...a hacker is basically someone like you and me.

P h a n t a s m
"Through dreams I control mankind."
--Legend

Technicalities... You say tomato, I say hacker

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster

Just adding useless asm code does nothing to the cracker, as when they run it, they keep track of which lines were executed, and when. The useless code will be taken out automatically.

YEs it does.
ALL lines will be executed, but they wont be relevant, but the cracker doenst know this, it will confuse him.

You can''t stop someone from cracking your game but you can do your best to make it as boring as possible and make it take as long as possible.

Henry

Encrypt the code, then put it through a decrypter to run it. I have been working on such a system for webpages for easy password protection. It might be possible to apply it to games, maybe not now but in the near future. Basically the only encryption standard that has not been broken yet is RSA. But, it takes a lot of system overhead to encrypt and decrypt. Uhmm...the major problem with encryption is key distribution, so some encryption standards are almost completely unbreakable (never say completly when dealing with encryption) as long as you can keep the key a secret. So you could use RSA to encrypt the key, then use something like a onetime pad cipher (actually, completely unbreakable if you don''t have the key). The onetime pad cipher uses a random key as long as the data intended to be encrypted, so it there are no patterns in the encrypted data. Look for a program called PGP, Pretty Good Protection.
Sorry...I go off on Wild Tangents (ha, I do stuff in JScript, so that''s a joke). The idea is to have a decrypter program that interprets the encrypted data. I guess it''s kindof like making a virtual machine and programming language, except the machine is one of you own design, something that no-one else know''s how to use and the language is something no-one else knows. The virtual machine is worthless on it''s own, it does nothing but interpret. The game code is also completely worthless on it''s own, because it can''t do anything with out the machine.
What does everyone think of this idea? Sure, it''s far fetched, would probably take a huge amount of processor power, but we''re really getting huge processor power nowadays.

"YOU APES WANNA LIVE FOREVER?" Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
"Who wants to live forever?" Queen
"Never trust a bald barber" me
B^)

Anything that has been assembled* can be dis-assembled*, period.

Another point, car door locks don''t stop car thieves however the entire population doesn''t just give up and not lock the doors. They keep honest/border-line people/personalities honest. The thieves are going to steal it if they really want it, regardless of what you do.

* -- Does not denote Assembly/Machine language

Encrypting the password won't help. When hacking software, you simply look for the branch command that checks the password and change it to a BRA (Branch always) then it'll accept any password. If you want it to look nice, branch around the dialog box that asks for the password. Simple as that.

Adding a lot of useless assembly won't help because just remember, there's hundreds of thousands of lines of code in an assembly program and the hackers are still able to find that one line and rout around it.

The hardest method I've seen to hack is when the program checks the password several times throughout the program. Then you have to find each of these and disable them to get it to work all the way.

I've hacked programs which I've lost the books to and I've found, all you need to do is find the ID of the dialog that says your password is wrong, search for that in the program, and work backwords from there. I've only done it to 2 of my programs but it only took me 10-15 minutes each time. One I did on my laptop while waiting for the ferry. (True, these are old programs, but I'm sure after practice, you can hack anything in a short time)

(and YES I did pay for the programs, I just lost the books over the years)

E:cb woof!

Edited by - Dog135 on 5/4/00 7:58:22 PM

dog135

It''s that easy? cool. I like that multiple check thingy. Of course, not during the game loop.

quote: Original post by ME

dog135

It''s that easy? cool. I like that multiple check thingy. Of course, not during the game loop.

Me /\