How to Crack Software (Reverse Engineering)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.พ. 2025
- In this video I showcase techniques for cracking different types of crackmes.
Official Discord Server - / discord
My Reverse Engineering Course - www.skool.com/...
Follow me on X - / atericparker
2:20 First CrackMe (Product Key derived from username)
10:12 Prebaked Key
11:28 A twist on the Windows 95 Keygen algorithm
Try Crackmes: crackmes.one/
Legal Disclaimer: Every program in this video is a CrackME, CrackMEs are educational reverse engineering puzzles designed to teach reverse engineering skills, NOT any sort of illegal piracy.
This video is created for educational purposes, and does not violate the DMCA or similar international laws.
(C) Eric Parker 2024
A keygen without music is like a TV without color.
chiptunes ftw so many memories
the music is used to distract from the hidden .dll or other sneaky rooting methods. never trust a keygen with music unless its in a sandbox inside of a vm
8-bit music
you mean r2r team
i hate the music. Its literal earrape at max volume xD
This feels like information being passed down from one generation to the next one to make sure it isnt lost
Yes that is what learning is. It's the advantage humans have over every other living thing.
@@N54MyBelovedother living beings pass knowledge down too. Do you really not know that? 💀
@@heelercs I don't see how you thought what I said implied I was only talking about dead people. No duh alive people from previous generations pass information down to the newer generations. What are you getting at
@@N54MyBeloved I didn’t say anything about dead people? Idk what you’re getting at now.
You said this is an “advantage humans have over every other living thing.” But non-human animals ALSO teach their young. So I don’t understand what advantage you’re saying we have that NO other living thing has.
@@heelercs Humans can write books and make videos on things so future generations don't have to re-learn how to do the same things generation after generation and they can spend their time alive learning how to do new things instead. That's how humans went from sharpening rocks into pointy spears to the internet and hypersonic planes
"So... the main benefit of a keygen is that--" *Activate Windows notification pops up*
LOL
I noticed that too this is so funny
ajajajaa
lol
Timestamp? Cant find it
Watched the whole thing with no understanding, you explained this very clear and descriptive, after 16mins I still have no idea well done
thought you were gonna end that with "still no understanding but am trying to crack software"
You can understand this as soon as you gonna try it by your self. But if you have some experience from these days of IDA, wdasm32 or even SoftIce, this should be an easy walk for you.
I was drinking water and I choked, now my nose can spit water.
ok glad im not alone
same
for educational purposes everyone must know that eric will put on cat ears at 100k
dope
He hearted it, therefore it’s confirmed
There still wont be a camera, but we will know the ears are on
subscribed
I don't know sh*t about coding, but this comment made me subscribe! Let's go 100k
nice, btw everyone who thinks this is JUST to steal software fails to see the potential, there is enough people who crack commercial software that you'll never have to worry about finding it, learning to crack on the oter hand can help you in niche fields such as having an old critical exe in use that the source is YEARS ago gone, for example the ticketing system for your air line running on a c64.... 100% unrecoverable source, using these same techniques you can tease the required info out of the compiled program to re-create it new without original source
I actually have an old piece of software at work that I can't move from Windows XP, because I can't activate it on a new computer since neither the servers nor the company that made it still exist.
Maybe I'll find something interesting, can't wait to see
如果你真的做過這些事
你應該能理解
這是一項 巨大的工程
@@JackyYang why is it a huge project? ain't seen no huge project 'round here.
@@baribari1000 你知道
一兩行簡單的c語言程式碼
轉成 asm 可能就是幾十行嗎
你知道 區區幾百行 c程式
至少也是上千行asm嗎
@@JackyYang and really, you need to know the instruction set of the target processor
You know it’s a good day when Eric uploads.
You know it's a good day when x uploads.
For real
New here and excited
i am a starving child and this is the last thing i will ever read . goodbye
@@joemkdd😢
i know nothing about coding or software, and i have no clue whats going on but i still find this so interesting!
Do not hesitate to try it out!
yeees, do it. just talk with chat gpt everday 1-2 hours and do some little projects and in 2 years your very good.
@@strawberry_aves chat gpt isn't as smart, as it is meant to be. Instead of making you clever, it is making you dumb! I tried the v. 3.5 and it went to be like a memorizing machine, and not really a thinking machine. So i went and wrote my own code.
Please do more of this, there's not so many people teaching reverse engineering like this.
In fact, what is shown in the video has almost nothing to do with actual cracking. Perhaps some software from the zero years from an unknown company will look like something like this, but even software newer than 2010 will already be obfuscated in some way, and the protection system will be much more complex than the key hardcoded into the source code. Not to mention virtualization, building source code on the fly (the program downloads its parts from the Internet as it passes authorization), multi-layer obfuscation and a lot of traps in different sections. If you are really interested in cracking modern software, find a specific example (not as complex as denuvo) and try to determine what it is packed with and what its protection consists of, and then remove this protection piece by piece.
that would be, because its illegal
@@clamojoat8543 goober
@@clamojoat8543on Comercial products...
Eric loves Serial Experiments Lain.
Myth Confirmed.
Let's all love Lain
Let's all love Lain
Like if you also dislike equality.
😂😂😂
Been there 😂
🎉
Best pun ever. You won the internet 🎉
>cicada icon
I love how he specified that what *_he's_* doing is perfectly legal...right after saying what he's doing can easily be used for other things.
TH-cam said I would like this video.
I did it.
Most Important: write a banger chiptune
or jungle
don't forget the sine wave scroller with greetings
Tristan Tate seems so free that he’s doing reverse engineering and I’m here for it 😂
I developed a software product 20 years ago and lost the source code. All I have now is the product itself and the keygen. I always wanted to put the keygen into a shop, so people could get the key after they bought the software. Until then I was sending the keys by email. I tried to understand the algorithm with ghidra and some other tools. I failed because I had no idea what I was doing.
I will try now with this excellent video. Thanks for this.
Did it work?
@@SunkeryCompactDiskI would also like to know
milmike, we must know!
Please milmike !
@MilMike we, as nerds, deserve a resolution to your story sir!
Honestly I love this channel, it's literally the main stuff i'm interested in.
In 2002 when I was just 14, a friend of mine cracked a DRM for me from scratch, I was gobsmacked. Now, he's a software engineer working on sensitive classified projects for an NGO. It's funny how that works.
downloading this video before youtube deletes it
same here hahah
if you looked in the description, CrackMe's are legal
in case*
maybe post in odysee like mutahar
@@whamer100 doesnt stop youtube from deleting it :P youtube deletes so many legal videos
Best reverse engineering channel on youtube, keep it up man!
The Activate Windows emblem confirms this dude is a pro. Liked and subscribed.
I like how it appeared halfway through
Eric Paker, Peter Parker .... both superheros if you ask me!
This is why all the big programs are becoming web apps.
... well, one of the reasons anyway.
The ability to do this gives you so much more power than a simple keygen.
the reality of it is not only keys aren't checked locally, you probably won't be able to attach the debugger to commercial stuff that easily either, and there won't be anything in plain text. i didn't know about decompiler explorer though, have to thank you for that one
I did not understood alot of it,but i enjoyed watching it,will binge your vids a little cause this is fun to watch for me
Eric, know that you can't escape from that reply. We'll never forget about it.
context?
context?
¿txetnoc
textcon?
Can you explain?
A complete breakdown of this for someone that’s never coded would be awesome, I wouldn’t know where to start in learning as there seems to be so many programming languages 😅
no offense, but a breakdown for complete beginners is imo impossible for something like this. A lot of reverse engineering is assuming things based on the structure, for which you already need experience programming in general, as well as C/C++ and at least basic Assembly understanding to make sense of the decompiled gibberish that stuff like Ghidra puts out (which involves language specific syntax, operations and structure, as well as stuff like OOP principles and links/references).
If you truly want to get into this specifically, I suggest starting with C++ and learning the basics with a book/online course that provides exercises, and slowly move the difficulty up. Once you feel comfortable enough with working with this, try dipping your toes into working with system calls and dll injections, and only after all that I'd suggest actually trying to reverse-engineer something
@@waker_link seems like people just want the barrier of entry as high as possible
@@p0worejtihBut the barrier of entry is high, reverse engineering an application is not a trivial task
@@p0worejtih has nothing to do with what people want, reverse engineering cannot be low barrier of entry, this is something people put in years and 1000s of hours into lol.
@@waker_link none taken, as I’m not knowledgeable about any of this I assumed it maybe less of a minefield and more easily addressable 😅
I’ll look into C/C++ and see if I can start to make any sense of it.
I have no idea whats going on or why i clicked on this video but i liked it very much! Very interesting, didn’t understand a thing.
Everyone should learn how to crack, reverse-engineer, or exploit software. Purchasing something should be a means of supporting creators, not an unfair deal (yes, I'm looking at you, Adobe).
Unfair? Adobe? I pay 12 dollar per year for whole program library..
@@backstab86 I don't talk about money; I was actually thinking about their terms and conditions instead.
@@backstab86 it's 38 bucks here with 48% discount. How do you pay so little?
@@我的暱稱 terms and conditions? What terms? You buy a program and use it....
@@pestrofamac cause sweden.
Im no computer engineer (my job is in desktop &networking), but I was able to understand a little of this. I suppose with practice, I could get this done 😅 Great job...
Used to use soft ice back in the day. That was great software
I remember my good old days with phrozen crew, softice, w32dasm, etc.
tKC :)
@@surject "Fravia's Pages of Reverse Engineering" :)
phrozen crew, thats still around, pH?
@@nomn.9944 who knows.
Cool video! Really like this “behind the wiring” approach. Back in the Kazaa days with Reloaded and the crack teams I always dreamt of becoming part of the team
What a gem of a video! Amazing stuff
He did this fast, in a real cenario probably is gonna take a few hours of code analysis and how things work, but for educational purpouses is good, its a good application of assembly and compilers
for the linux binary at 11:30, you can use angr to create a keygen. I just learned about angr and I am falling in love.
To my this will always be fascinating, I do work in IT but when I watch videos likes it suddenly feels like I dont.
It is absolutely crazy that people can learn this.
Well done.
IDA free allows you to decompile now so it’s not expensive unless you need some extra architectures or something
Cheers Eric, that was damn fascinating and takes me back. I remember waay back in the day using the monitor etc functions in an Action Replay cartridge for the C64 and later Amiga to aid with this type of activity. A lot different, but similar.
Andrew Tate after no longer being the Top G. Joking thanks a lot for this tutorial. I am totally new so most of it didn't make sense but watching and learning. You are the real Top G.
Wow! What an interesting video! Thank you a lot!!!
The more people who knwo how to do this stuff the better! This is the FIRST time i've seen someone teach it, fair enough I haven't searched for it. But still, very clever stuff and useful for a huge number of things like some comments below state.
old days keygen: I know what you're thinking
modern keygen: I don't know what you're thinking so I'll make you think this instead and then I can say "I know what you're thinking"
🎉 Thank you for doing this. Appreciate the education and deep dive into subjects that hardly came across my way. Bless you
No clue what he's taking about, but it was interesting to watch 😂
proceed to download this video for unforseen future
This video would've helped a lot 17 years ago.
It helps a lot now. U gotta start somewhere.
these videos are like that one guy who talks about how thing are made which people sleep to but for coders
Clarification that's maybe needed: I don't know where you live but here (NL) it's not illegal to change the code of executables you have on your computer. A company can't make up their own laws with eula's about who goes to prison. The most they can do if they don't like you personally when you don't follow their rules is something like banning you from their multiplayer network or similar. Just don't break into some companies computer and stuff like that, obvious things. You will never have to pay damage or go to prison for changing the code you have stored on your own computer.
This is how I got into coding back in the day when I was a teen. Allegedly ofc, I’m a good boy who did nothing wrong
6:49 using lain as the username is so fitting for this kind of video.
Cracking commercial software is not a crime until you use it .
Thanks for such cool video, very interesting topic!
its 6:36 AM, I haven't slept yet, I don't crack, I don't write code, I'm not a devoloper or a programer (still trying to convince myself to learn), and I just sat here and watched the whole video. I am cooked 💀
Same, idk where to start
@@Shockload Hello World!
@@IntolerableEvil ok maybe past that ? Should I start in C++ or Python ? Maybe bit of both ? Do u have any recommended channels
same dude, no clue wtf any of that code does whatsoever but here I am paying attention to the whole video like ill somehow learn something
@@ShockloadC/C++ would be a good start. It helps in understanding data structures and algorithms and how they really work
40k subscribers left Eric
nyaaa~
@@EricParker ERIC??? 😭
@@EricParkerHe is starting to transform
@@EricParker NAH ☠
@@EricParker how to crack/sniff app based on java platform?
Lets all love Lain
😅 great and i follow keep teaching us well. Can you provide a complete beginners course from Zero to hero please
Great guidelines really enjoy watching and learning! Thx
here before TH-cam takes this down
this is amazing, subbed
let's all love lain
This is awesome, thank you for sharing the knowledge. Cheers
We're gonna be our own provider with this one 🗣️ 🔥 🔥🔥
LETS ALL LOVE LAIN
cool job, please do more like this and do not wait for 2 weeks again :)
Algorithmically derived license keys like the one demonstrated here are probably uncommon today right? I'd imagine, as you had mention online activation, that some keys could even just be the nonsense output of something totally arbitrary that is then stored in a DB?
My algorithm is strong !! Thanks for the video ! !
Really fun and interesting video, please keep making reverse engineering tutorials !
I have no idea what this dude is talking about, but its useful information so im trying to absorb it
I love reverse engineering, which is why I made my channel. Great tutorial for newbies.
This is very interesting. I have always been wondering how this works.
This takes me back to the late 90's early 00's doing this lol
Indeed, that is authentic Netrunner gameplay.
Awesome, we need one Video like this for Mac Software :)
Liked and Subbed :) Enjoyed the video and love more of these
Idk why but start of this video had me thinking, "Hi guys, this is the lockpickingla8wyer and today I'm going to pick this software with my keygen".
This feels like an equivalent of a hello world app to reverse engineering.
Great video, thank you for this cracking sneak peek, super interesting!
How did you get so good at computers? Good video thanks.
so you can use this with everything if you do it right,, thanks for sharing i know you have keygens en cracks but not how to configure or how to debug,
The mistake in the code is at 4:20 when you typed in &UserEnterePassword .... I think it's missing the D.
I was doing this 25 years ago with w32dasm and softice then things got messy with packed executables
I loved it! Any other cracking game recomandations?
i know this might be a tough request but could you show us (educational) to theoretically emulate a backend. that would really help alot of talented people.
LETS LOVE LAIN
It's really fun to watch, but a little too complicated for me!
Can you do a video on how to increase the security of the program in order to make it harder to be cracked?
Id love a video on AFL and maybe how one could do "smart fuzzing" like finding the most likely place to fuzz thatd lead to a crash
I wasn't looking for this video but youtube recommends this
Just getting back into this. Is it typical, when decompiling software, that there's no obfuscation? Im sure someone has figured out how to de-optimize and serialize compiled binaries. As i see it you should be able to make binaries harder to understand at the cost of optimization/performance? Sorry if this is a silly question.
I've reversed stuff, but it's always been stuff that was intentionally written to be predictable, or at least that was authors goal.
Modern compilers made your code obfuscated enough 😆
No, obfuscation is in decline nowadays. It was stupid technique back then, it's stupid now.
what kind of wizardy did I stumble upon on...
I can't even write Hello World! in HTML. But youtube sure is insistent on making me want to learn how to crack, so here I am.
Cracking software itself is not illegal. It's distributing copies that is. Cracking is just a colloquial term for 'reverse-engineering' and people have built entire careers out of doing just that and doing it well.
That's reductive. Decompling code to circumvent copy protections or recreate proprietary functions using their methods is illegal. Working out how a software or IC works as a black box is reverse engineering but not illegal
@@NamelessSmile Decompiling is not illegal no matter what your intentions are. It's those intentions that constitute offense, not decompiling. The black box part does not even make any sense.
@@ФеофанЭтополедолжнобытьзаполне reverse engineering software to circumvent copy protection is against the terms of licence for most software user agreements. If you break the agreement you are using the software illegally
@@NamelessSmile I'm not using it, I'm disassembling it. Never heard of no agreement, let alone never signed one. I never even ran the app. Questions?
@ФеофанЭтополедолжнобытьзаполне ? Pretty obviously, it's fine to disassemble and reverse engineer the apps but not use them. If you reverse engineered something to crack it and never used it then obviously you wouldn't be doing anything against it. But if you crack it and use or distribute it then you are circumventing it.
Reverse Engineering or cracking software is not illegal
if it is used to open a password on a device that is locked by ransomware.
i like that he used "lain iwakura" as the code in the beginning
Как говорится, "Дай человеку рыбу, он будет сыт весь день, дай человеку удочку, он будет сыт всю жизнь"
These tools are not just "cracking" tools. Often source code is not available because it's been lost in time or on that of my own machines which is sitting on the other side of an ocean. Powered off. it's also entirely legitimate to reverse engineer drivers to fix bug or port them to another platform, add features. Or - and that's my primary use for that class of tools - see what compiler, assembler, linker have created from my own code. That is useful for debugging the toolchain itself and performance optimization. Generally I prefer to use simple commandline tools like readelf and objdump but when things get complex another class of “big gun tools” is required.
this was helpful, thanks!❤
When I lost my micro SD card source code for my programming history but I still had most of my binaries I knew this type of software existed but could never find any. If I knew of this of 2015 this would of changed life. 😢