Cheat Engine

[X.inzo]

WTF, now I have to type it all over again.

My friend and me made a program (a trainer), we made it in visual basic.. and we want to keep it kinda private our question is, how do we do that?
We know it's possible to work with hardware ID's and MAC addresses, but how?

(so.. we made an application that needs to be protected from leechers and spreading the internet.
To do this, we would like to make it so that even if you acquired the application illegally, you can't use it without our permission.
How do we accomplish that goal?
Could we maybe get some help with this?

Thanks in advance.

[Zerith]

If you don't know how you do this and you've never done this before, then even if you manage to do this it will be most likely easy reverseable.

You could use some packer and add a password and stuff, still not completely protected but it should help.

Anyway... you shouldn't have coded this in Visual Basic... C/C++ would be better.

[X.inzo]

[BanMe]

methods that uses hardwareid's are only as good as how its coded if the hardwareid is hardcoded into the file then in can be manipulated..
same way with MAC ADDRESS's they can be spoofed and the string can be manipulated in the source..

other more practical solutions include self deletion..self mutilation..the use of various packers.. though none of these methods are full proof..

so unless your willing to spend money on a solution, i suggest just not releasing it.. (it cant get anywhere on its own o0)

regards BanMe

[Slugsnack]

best solution is to have it so it can not work without connecting to your server where it will fetch some dynamic bytes which will make it work correctly. and then there is a check from who is the request coming from, etc.

[BanMe]

bah bypassed with logic, a few public tools.. and concepts.

Hook Winsock Recv and use memalyzer (DynamoRio) to track memory reads and writes (.data?)and maybe a binary sampling of likely places code would use to dynamically introduce changes to code flow..(one way to trace code flow in a rather simple form is GetFunctionLength() provided by dawark..as this function just searches for conditional statements and based on the addresses of the conditionals relative to funcion base it calculates function length) instead of retrieving length one could store compare and restore code paths(if one had stack information...on could do more) but i digress)

the best bet tracking the code changes occuring because of memory writes would probably be the Driver and the Dll.. Write a Dll that gets injected and loads the dll(Memalyzer) and calls CreateMirror(ImageFileHead.CodeSectionBase);

Track Reads and writes to recv buffer memory region(i suggest the generalpagefault method but w/e is best for you is cool)

could also make self-healing self-debugging code with the combination of such concepts

regards BanMe

[dnsi0]

The protection you write will probably no be able to keep out anyone. So get your self themida or WinLicense.


Have a look here is your serious into C++ protection.
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/security/AntiReverseEngineering.aspx

[arigity]

read all important data (addresses, values to write, etc) from a server which will only respond correctly to yours/your friends IP

[BanMe]

as i stated above the best solution is doing nothing to protect it except not putting it out there..

[Flyte]

I agree with BanMe, if you just keep it between you two, it's not like it's going to program some legs for itself and stroll onto the internet.