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645

answers:

4

Hi,

after fighting several versions of the CoreKeyGen created by some "minamoto" guy, a new version has appeared. This version is particularly sophisticated and seems to modify the actual binary itself, using a dylib known as libbassmod.dylib (this is in the keygen's mac os folder).

Has anyone ever come across this & can give me advice on how to stop it?

If so, how can I stop the keygen? it seems like the library can see what calls my app makes and stop them somehow, I'm not too sure.

+1  A: 

libbassmod.dylib is for the background music playback...

Minamoto
oh hello minamoto, strangely enough you share the same name as the hacker?
David Schiefer
and i doubt it, this can be easily done via NSSound.
David Schiefer
A: 

What? A keygen usually means someone reverse engineered your key verification algorithm to produce their own algorithm that satisfies yours. There is nothing you can do to stop this, except use PKI or some variant of a whitelist of keys. Even then, they can just patch your program. If you want to know what the keygen is doing, you need to dissassemble it with a dissassembler such as Ollydbg, IDA Pro, etc, it should be fairly simple as keygens are tiny programs, although it's probably a waste of time.

Longpoke
of course I have hard coded all my keys, I solved the issue by introducing product activation, but the keygen does indeed patch my app :/
David Schiefer
funnily enough the hacker himself just commented as the username "minamoto"...i'm sure many developers would want to have a little "chat" with him since his hack list is endless :/
David Schiefer
A: 

Just show me how to use NSSound to play non-Core Audio formats like music modules, coding master?

Minamoto
i did not know that you require this kind of sound. What I am wondering however is if you are the minamoto who hacked my application?
David Schiefer
+2  A: 

I doubt that the "Minamoto" here is the real guy you are looking for, maybe just someone wanted to making fun of you. People in the scene won't have the time to read the post here, nor reply under their real nick.

Back to your questions, libbassmod.dylib is used for audio module playback. It's often used in windows key generaters by the Scene to play audio module formats such as XM, IT, S3M, MOD, MTM, UMX. more info you can read up here:

http://www.un4seen.com/

And about the idea of fighting them or making fun of them in your blog, IMO it will only bring you troubles(Espicially some groups like this one, CORE(which stands for "Challenge Of Reverse Engineering"), google for it if you want to know more about it).

Enough said, if I were you, I'd put my time on making my applications better instead of coding protections. That's the right and only way to get more customers(And believe me they hate software protections). Those who use cracks will never buy anything from you(Just see all those thinsg on MSJ), they use the cracked version of your application was just because they can use it for free, so actually you lose nothing.

A Mac Dev
i have prevented the hacking again, but you're right. thanks for your useful answer :)
David Schiefer