

Screenwriter wonders: Could this be done by a good hacker in real life? - newbee40

I'm a screenwriter with a lead character that is a hacker...
He needs to get 100 boxes of protools audio software that "fell off the back of a truck" to not be identified as stolen when he goes to re-sell them as new.<p>Could he create new authentication numbers for them and get protools to accept them?<p>Or any other way to tackle his need...<p>Thoughts, help, ideas.<p>Thanks!
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logn
It's common to find serial number generators posted online. I just googled
"protools serials" and found one. The algorithms to generate them are reverse
engineered and published. That's not a very sexy hack but for a dude selling
software "fallen off a truck" is how they would do it. However, protools uses
a dongle system now (a hard USB key) so I'm not sure that would work, but the
serial gen method would apply for other audio products.

But I question the premise here. A box of protools already has the serial to
activate it. Do you know they track the boxes and can label them as stolen?
The cost to protools to make an individual box of software is probably less
than a dollar.

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rex_gsd
If he could somehow work out the algorithm that the serial numbers follow.

The software or server only knows that a serial number is correct by either :

1) It matches an algorithm Ie, if your algorithm was 'all even numbers' are
correct serials, then if your boxes had the numbers 100, 102, 104 then it may
be obvious that 106 would be a correct serial number.

2) The software connects to the software creators server to verify a random
serial number on the box is stored in their database and hasn't been activated
before. To get around this, you could either hack the server and copy their
database or intercept the response from the server to the application and
emulate this response that indicates 'yes this is a valid serial'.

Though I think your character would sound cooler if he did #1 :)

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redspark
Super basic - Would fool a high percentage of the audience.

He could hack the software to call home to his own server, rather than the
protools server.

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dear
Boxes of software? Software are downloaded. Dinosaurs come in boxes.

