Subj : Cracking DOS software
To   : Nightfox
From : AKAcastor
Date : Sun Apr 07 2024 15:05:36

 N> I'm a software engineer, but I've never really looked 
 N> into reverse-engineering and cracking software.  My 
 N> skills with that are fairly limited, but I think it 
 N> would be interesteing to do though.  I've sometimes 
 N> looked at executable and other binary files with a hex 
 N> editor, but I'm not sure what I'd be looking for as far 
 N> as license and serial number checks and that sort of 
 N> thing.  It's naturally more difficult to reverse-
 N> engineer a binary than to look at source code. :)

The tools make all the difference!  And willingness to trace through assembler code endlessly! :)  Some of the disassembly and decompilation tools and debuggers can do a shocking amount of the work in some cases.  There's no universal solution, but when it does work it's pretty impressive.

I love doing hex-edit hacks too.  Neat to poke around inside an executable and just paint over some bits to adjust things just so.  Another very handy tool is 'strings', to get a list of readable text inside a binary file - great for taking a quick peek.


Chris/akacastor

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 * Origin: Another Millennium - Canada - another.tel (21:1/162)

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