

Hacking Windows 8 Games - yread
http://justinangel.net/HackingWindows8Games

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RyanZAG
Hardly matters if the hack is easy or hard. In either case, someone who enjoys
hacking things will hack it (and the more difficult to hack the more enjoyment
and so more likely to be hacked). Once a single person cracks a piece of
software, they can upload it to tpb or similar and now everyone has it
cracked.

So keeping the hacks as easy as possible with as minimal impact to paying
customers is the correct way to do it. Having it be a little text file you
edit that flags something as bought or not is the perfect way, as support can
easily instruct users with difficulties to flip the switch themselves.

Making it difficult doesn't help anybody - people who want to pirate WILL
download a pirated torrent. Don't give them reason to do this by making your
version of the game worse than the pirated copy!! NB!!

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JuDue
Except not every OS makes it easy to install third party hacks. Or as
beneficial.

Jailbreaking iOS is quite a step for the majority of users, and means
relinquishing the benefits and ease of the Store.

Arguably, if this article is any indication, elements of Win8 are not secure
enough to outweigh the benefits of these quick and simple hacks.

Having said that, Win8 is less of a closed minimal mobile system, and probably
better compared to OSX. Desktop with a tablet layer bolted on.

~~~
RyanZAG
Disagree - piracy on iOS (especially for games) is exceptionally high. The
generic nature of iOS protection means that once a device is jailbroken any
cracked app can be installed simply and easily. There are numerous cracked app
stores that make it just as easy as the Apple Store to install games.

People who want to pirate WILL pirate. By creating the locked-down system on
iOS, you force people who wish to change the feel of the dashboard to
jailbreak their devices. They then install a couple Winterboard themes onto
their device and at the same time, they come into contact with some nice games
that they can tap a button to crack and install for free. This actually
creates pirates by forcing them to become pirates to simply improve their
device's theme.

Same for removing carrier bloatware on Android - people will root their device
to remove bloatware. Once rooted, they can easily purchase games from the
Android store, copy them out of secure storage, and then get a refund for the
game while keeping the game. If the bloatware was removable by default, they
would not have rooted in the first place.

Making it difficult to pirate by affecting your paying customers is a terrible
idea - focus on customer value - pirates WILL pirate regardless. If you give
out your game for free, pirates will still pirate it and you will still see it
sitting on TPB (and others).

Piracy is an industry, not a customer. You can't sell to pirates by making it
difficult for them.

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nwh
The term "jailbreaking" has has effectively become one for piracy, which is
incredibly disappointing. Teams of extraordinarily talented developers
developing the exploits are seen now as just filthy pirates, and I truly
dislike that.

It's to the point where hackers like Steffen Esser seem unwilling to release
anything lest it be used for rampant piracy.

Possibly worse still, iOS apps can be easily pirated by exploiting Apple's
developer tools. I imagine they will soon crack down on that, they must be
aware of the amount of piracy that goes on.

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damian2000
Interesting that the author of this article is the Principal Engineer on
Nokia's Windows Phone team, and previously worked for Microsoft ... he
obviously knows this tech inside out.

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RyanZAG
Wow, that puts a new slant on the article...

1) He wants people to pirate Windows 8 apps to try and increase demand for
Windows 8 itself through piracy?

2) He is getting ready to quit or is transferring to a new division and wants
to make a point to his bosses?

Either way, wow...

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Yuioup
Hmm ... Service Unavailable. I wonder if he pissed off people somehow.

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meaty
This really doesn't surprise me. The CLR has always been wide open for reverse
engineering and decompilation. Seriously, C++ might get you further here but
don't rely on it anyway.

Old way of doing it: It's pretty damn easy to mod an assembly using Mono.Cecil
to inject a return statement before a chunk of license code.

New way: XML.

They even made it easier :)

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kybernetyk
Article seems gone. Here's a cached version (though some of the pictures won't
load):

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:justina...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:justinangel.net/HackingWindows8Games)

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icebraining
I had it still in my browser's cache, so here's a copy with images:
<http://hckcacher.staticloud.com/>

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Scene_Cast2
A good rule of thumb is that if only the user "knows" something, it can be
cracked & hacked. I'm sure that if a similarly-protected app (no server-side
checks) is there on Android, one would be able to crack it with some work.
Sure, one may argue that it's harder on Android - but that's besides the point
(and the trade off between power and locked-down-ness)

I haven't done mobile dev - are there any built-in DRM features that
developers can use?

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JuDue
True almost every security layer is crackable.

The idea is to make buying an app more convenient than the effort and time
involved in cracking.

Not sure Windows8 apps are there yet, reading this. Will undoubtably be
addressed in future updates, but a little scary how easy the hacks were.

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icebraining
_The idea is to make buying an app more convenient than the effort and time
involved in cracking._

Buying an app was always more convenient than cracking. The problem is making
it more convenient than downloading an already cracked copy.

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navneetpandey
It happens. When you feature on Hacker News server crashes or site becomes
offline. LOL

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kabdib
As a guy with some experience in platform crypto . . . facepalm. I can't
believe they did it this way, it's like they didn't even try.

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pmelendez
How would you made it? (Honest question)

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cientifico
And this is the reason why day by day, more game only work on online mode, and
don't save even a cache in the local storage.

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thethiny
can please give me one with images? I'm confused! at least mail it to me!
thethiny@ymail.com thanks!

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fra522033
i dose not matter if you a good hacker or not hacking is haking

