Major piracy group warns games may be crack proof in 2 years

[xirtamehtsitahw]

Yup...like I said, it's actually IMPOSSIBLE to make anything hack-proof, unless one resorts to ridiculous measures like quantum encryption (which would basically be impossible to incorporate into a video game).

In short, the pirates will always find a way to regain lost ground that game developers take back from them via new encryption methods. All encryption methods inevitably fail.

[dlevere]

Denuvo was once thought to be an unbeatable DRM, except that in the past few months the timeline for breaking through it and cracking the games it is supposed to protect has been whittled down to mere days.

New Cracking Group May Have Delivered Denuvo Its Death Blow

[Pyriel]

I don't know about hackers' budgets. It kind of depends on the hacker, I would think. Overall it seems like more of an "infinite monkeys" problem. A software company creates super-uncrackable DRM/anti-tamper and puts it in the wild, where it ultimately gets made into a static target for infinite monkeys trying infinite tricks with infinite machines that only get more powerful over time.

If you read the article dlevere posted, it doesn't sound like anything was brute-forced. Someone just figured out how to trick Denuvo and other DRM checks into believing the full version was a demo the user had legitimate rights to. Although, a second crack uses an unknown method that may or may involve similar tricks. Bird Sister and her group weren't even mentioned.

[xirtamehtsitahw]

The hackers-versus-game developers arms race in a nutshell:

Game developers have a limited budget. Thus, money that would normally go toward better graphics, gameplay, sound or AI now goes toward protecting games from piracy. Developers also can't just splurge on souped-up velociraptor computers.

However...

On the other hand, hackers aren't usually hampered by budgetary constraints. Thus, they often play cat-and-mouse with game developers using computers far more powerful than those used by the developers.

In short, as powerful as Denuovo was, it was only a matter of time before it would fold to much better-equipped hackers (such as Bird Sister's group).

[dlevere]

First cracks form in Denuvo’s previously impervious DRM armor

For months now, the digital rights management solution known as Denuvo has proven utterly impervious to cracks and workarounds — so impervious that a major piracy group warned games may become completely "crack-proof" within two years (that same group later took a public break from even attempting any more single-player hacks).

In recent days, however, the first cracks have started to develop in Denuvo's digital armor.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/0...ous-drm-armor/

[dlevere]

Pirating Group To Stop Cracking Some Games To Evaluate Impact On Sales

Just Cause 3 has still not been cracked, according to new report.

By Eddie Makuch

China-based cracking group 3DM, the team that recently said anti-piracy measures on PC games will be so advanced by 2018 that it may bring about an end to pirated games, has made another big announcement.



TorrentFreak reports that 3DM leader "Bird Sister" wrote on her blog that the group will stop cracking single player games apparently in an effort to measure the impact it has on sales.

"We just had an internal meeting. Starting at the Chinese New Year (February 8th), 3DM will not crack any single player games," she said. "We'll take a look at the situation in a year's time to see if genuine sales have grown."

This announcement comes a month after Bird Sister said her team was unable to crack Avalanche's open-world game Just Cause 3, which uses a secondary encryption system called Denuovo. According to TorrentFreak, the game has still not been cracked.

Bird Sister does not mention Denuovo by name in her blog post, however. Head to TorrentFreak to read their full report.

BioWare's 2014 RPG Dragon Age Inquisition also used Denuovo, which adds to whatever other form of DRM a developer/publisher may put on a game. For that game, Denuovo was reportedly able to keep pirates at bay for an entire month, which was deemed a long time.

DRM is a controversial and debated topic in gaming. Assassin's Creed publisher Ubisoft has admitted that DRM cannot stop piracy, while The Witcher developer CD Projekt Red doesn't put any DRM on its PC games because it thinks DRM is the "worst thing in the gaming industry."

[Pyriel]

Dunno. If I play about 5 new (to me) games in a year that aren't just little, browser-based, half-hour diversions, I was busy. Anymore, I only play things that get through my fog of not particularly caring about video game premises or promises. Whatever I'm playing is likely to be Game of the Year or a sleeper hit of some kind, if it's not merely a franchise I happened to get into years ago. So I only have a vague sort of idea how much crap is coming out.

Last year I played my way through the first three Arkham games (combination of good and franchise), Shadows of Mordor (good), and Mortal Kombat X (sort of crappy). I bought Witcher 3, but haven't touched it. I'm aware a lot of crap came out, like Hatred and the bug-filled PC version of the fourth Arkham game, which is supposedly good on consoles, but I'm hard pressed to think of many examples, since I don't have the annoyance from having spent money and time on them. Other than that, blissful oblivion.

[xirtamehtsitahw]

But, the Chinese hackers may be on to something, though--it's getting harder and harder to crack into the newest games, due to the extremely advanced anti-piracy measures being used. However, have you noticed a general downturn in the overall QUALITY of games being released? Game companies are spending more time and money trying to make their games hack-proof and therefore not as much time trying to churn out quality games.

The end result is a sloppy, bug-ridden mess that is almost as impregnable as a bulletproof, time-locked bank vault. An absurd notion, if you think about it.

[Pyriel]

Yeah, I edited that together badly. You can't brute-force QKD or anything similar, barring some highly unlikely new breakthrough, but it could still be rendered more or less useless by a bad implementation. I was mainly thinking of securing hardware there, but that whole discussion is seriously theoretical and way beside the point.

[xirtamehtsitahw]

The reason quantum encryption is impossible to hack is this: the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. This fundamental concept of quantum physics can be summed up as follows: you cannot simultaneously determine the position AND velocity of a photon. If you attempt to determine the photon's velocity, you lose the ability to precisely determine its position. If you attempt to pinpoint the photon's position, you "stop" the particle and therefore cannot determine its velocity.

If you attempt to "hack" a quantum-encrypted code string, you alter the properties of the lead "detection" photon, and therefore destroy it and the message it was protecting.

In short, you CANNOT hack physics.

[Pyriel]

You're kind of missing the bigger point, which is that if someone like Denuvo manages to create a protection scheme where "extended assault" means years, it doesn't really matter that it isn't Heat Death of the Universe secure. If it takes three years to crack, you'd be lucky if there's much of a market left for the game, and there might not even be any devoted players left itching to mod it. It's not a question of it being completely uncrackable, it's about whether or not the protection schemes can work long enough that it ceases to matter when they eventually fail.

Even in a war situation, "unbreakable" has a limited scope. If the Germans had invented Triple-DES instead of Enigma, it wouldn't have mattered that 50 years later it became vulnerable.

Hell, even a quantum solution of some sort could theoretically fall. Brute force might be impossible without quantum computers, but the developer could always do like every console does. Implement a hell of a security scheme full of encryption, and then make it possible to break through all of it with an invalid USB handshake or something.

[bungholio]

No complaints here, but I wonder when a day will come when they decide to not ban cheating and make separate servers for them. Locking up your code is like the digital equivalent of preventing people from modifying their homes and vehicles. Nobody likes pirates, they get mixed in with homebrew and game modding giving both some very bad names that are identical to many people.

It's still kind of exaggerated though. There's always somebody around to crack stuff, just a matter of them releasing it to the public. There's still no such thing at this point in time as "uncrackable". We wouldn't have even heard of "cracking" as referring to removing a bunch of stuff from games to make them easily piratable if pirates would stop stealing things. Unless you are in some situation like a country where you can't get something or are really just unable to legitimately acquire things, what reason do you really have for doing it?


Also, for the "quantum encryption can't be cracked" thing, just because people don't know a way doesn't mean there isn't one. We won't know until we're there just like everything else. Endless things get said like they are unquestionably carved in stone throughout life, and over and over somebody somewhere proves otherwise. Naysayers are everywhere and a hindrance to everything in life, if we continued listening to them we probably wouldn't have discovered the wheel or made airplanes.

[xirtamehtsitahw]

The only way a game can be made completely uncrackable is to use quantum encryption techniques. Anything else would eventually fold to extended assaults. INCLUDING Denuvo and SecuROM.

The problem with quantum encryption is that it is VERY expensive, on an order of magnitude (or greater) than Denuvo or SecuROM.

That means that the Chinese people predicting gloom and doom for game piracy is (for now) false.

So, hack and be merry, for the end is still not nigh.

[dlevere]

Pirates Finding It Harder To Crack New PC Games

Pirates Finding It Harder To Crack New PC Games

Posted by samzenpus

schnell writes:

Engadget reports that a few recent top-tier video game releases using updated DRM technology have gone uncracked for more than a month and left DRM hackers stymied thus far.

The games FIFA 16 and Just Cause 3, using an updated DRM system called Denuvo, have thus far frustrated experienced Chinese crackers' best efforts far longer than the usual 1-2 weeks it takes for most games to be cracked.

Although the article is light on technical details about what makes the new DRM system harder to defeat, it does note that "Based on the current pace of encryption tech, 'in two years time I'm afraid there will be no free games to play in the world,' said one forlorn pirate."

[Pyriel]

Yeah. I'm all for the company getting money, but I'm also not above wanting all the obtrusive or obstructive crap taken out if I can have it that way.