Cracking: Tools and Strategies

Summary

Cracking is the art of reversing software to bypass protections or other undesirable functionality. This chapter explores some of the key tools and strategies used for software cracking, including the use of key generators and patching to defeat key checkers. One of the most common practices for licensing software is through license keys. License keys are a common anti‐piracy solution, and they have their advantages. Digital signatures on license keys, like those used by Windows, make it much more difficult to generate fake, valid keys. Key generators are distributed for people to generate a “free” key for software. Procmon is a tool distributed as part of the Sysinternals suite of tools. Procmon also records events for file operations, such as opening, closing, and editing files. Resource Hacker can be a useful tool for exploring the structure of a binary prior to the cracking process.