Pretty much how I started cracking game copy protections in the late 80's/early 90's. I already owned the games I was cracking, it just became more interesting to me how these protections were implemented and how I'd defeat them. Sometimes I think that was more fun than the game itself. I just didn't want to have to look up pages in manuals or read maroon colored paper with dark blue ink.
I didn't have the luxury of Ida Pro back then, but I did find a disassembler. Using that I'd read through the game code until I found the conditional jumps and then patched the original file with 0xE8 (JEZ?), 0xEB (JMP?), or 0xCD 0x90 (NOP?). At one time I used to be able to recognize just the Opcodes in hex, so I might have those wrong today.
When I started working at Egghead, I was granted time by my manger to crack games for our demo station, so we wouldn't have to jump through hoops on the sales floor. For various professional reasons I've had the pleasure of bypassing my company's own protections. Most recently I used Smali/Baksmali to demonstrate how our company's Android beta timebomb was pretty easy to circumvent.
Once a hacker, always a hacker. I have no doubt that this low level tinkering was why I got into computers in the first place and why they still hold my fascination.
I didn't have the luxury of Ida Pro back then, but I did find a disassembler. Using that I'd read through the game code until I found the conditional jumps and then patched the original file with 0xE8 (JEZ?), 0xEB (JMP?), or 0xCD 0x90 (NOP?). At one time I used to be able to recognize just the Opcodes in hex, so I might have those wrong today.
When I started working at Egghead, I was granted time by my manger to crack games for our demo station, so we wouldn't have to jump through hoops on the sales floor. For various professional reasons I've had the pleasure of bypassing my company's own protections. Most recently I used Smali/Baksmali to demonstrate how our company's Android beta timebomb was pretty easy to circumvent.
Once a hacker, always a hacker. I have no doubt that this low level tinkering was why I got into computers in the first place and why they still hold my fascination.