Game protection against cracks and piracy

[SoftComplete]

Software piracy! Cracked serial numbers! Thousands of commercial products are posted on the warez sites and become available to all every day! Companies lose millions of dollars every year to software piracy, and faulty protection programs. Shareware developers look for unbreakable protection for their products and create some protection themselves or try many of the ready-made tools. Unfortunately most tools have already been cracked, and self solutions often only take one determined cracked a few hours to bypass. As a result they soon find the stoles keys and product cracks on thousands of hacker Internet pages.
No solution ? Well there is

It is time to turn to time tested, EXECryptor protection product. EXECryptor is a powerful software tool that provide developers with software protection from reverse engineering, analysis and modifications. Its main difference from other protection tools is its brand new metamorphing code transformation technology.

With EXECryptor the protected code block is not just packed or obfuscated like many other packers, but also disassembled into nondeterminate transformations, effectively scrambling the visible logical code structure and making it hard to reverse. After the code transformation, it remains executable and working as it is supposed to but it cannot be analysed, modified, or circumvented.
It is not just a question about code encryption but also code transformation. You can optionally wrap additional parts of your code, at a source code level, in special flags which then transform into virtually impossible code to trace, crack, or bypass. Protected code blocks are never decrypted during execution they remain in their transformed code state. Code restoration becomes an NP-hard problem.
EXECryptor has the innovative very powerful antidebug, antitrace and import protection features to stop the latest cracking software.
EXECryptor allows to use short registration keys of 12/16 characters long, based on a new generation of our HardKey algorithm, cryptographically strong ultrashort digital signature.
The power of software protection with EXECryptor is proved out in practice: despite numberous cracking attempts and challenges, the EXECryptor's 2.x series has not been cracked since its inception in July of 2004.
In addition to its advanced protection features, EXECryptor allows you to compress the code and resources of your application.
EXECryptor is able to protect any 32bit PE executable file (exe, dll, bpl, vxd, wdm). It has been tested with W95/98/ME/2000/NT/XP/2003. SDKs are available for Delphi, C++Builder, Microsoft Visual C++, LCC, PellesC, Visual Basic, PowerBASIC and PureBasic.

EXECryptor is distributed electronically over the Internet; free trial version is available at http://www.strongbit.com for evaluation.

* Operating system: Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003
* RAM: 32 Mb
* Hard Disk: 2.5 Mb
EXECryptor Web Page: http://www.strongbit.com

[Alex]

How do you execute code that "is never decrypted"? That's probably "secret" ;)
After all this is software you're talking about right?

Alex

[neptune3d]

Not to be a wet blanket but even with the shiniest new protection system a hack will be found. I have heard several times about a new unbreakable system and shortly after heard that it had been comprimised.

This is not to say that we should not protect our products at all, stopping the 'casual pirate' (as microsoft would say) can save substantial revenue.

It is interesting that they claim EXECryptor has the longest uncracked record right now (since july 2k4) but I was unable to find any titles listed using this scheme? Perhaps someone knows of some as it would be interesting to see if this is true in the game world.

[geon]

How do you execute code that "is never decrypted"? That's probably "secret" ;)

As I understand it, the processor instructions will be pseudo-randomly rearranged (while keeping the functionality intact) to hide it's true purpose to a would-be cracker.

[Kenneth Gorking]

I think all software developers should learn how to crack so they have an understanding of what they are up against. I played around with it a few years back, and it was quite the eyeopenere to be able to remove cd "protection" from highend storebought games by replacing a jz with jmp just after a few days of reading :blink:

[Kenneth Gorking]

I would also seriosly recomend anyone interested in protecting their executables to read the Make your own PE Protector (http://www.codeproject.com/cpp/peprotector1.asp#Conclusion11) at The Code Project.

[Alex]

I agree with kenneth. It is a far bigger hassle to crack something that is only used for one specific project. You'd have to invest lot's of time to crack a single app as there is no premade crack for it. AFAIK it is not possible to create secure executeable protected code purely in software on todays machines. With hardware aid (TPM) that's a different story. If they add TPM to your cpu and secure the complete system hardware wise then it will get really hard to crack something. AFAIK, Pure software (win95 compatible) probably running entirely in usermode is not gona stop anyone who's serious.

Alex

[phil14]

AFAIK it is not possible to create secure executeable protected code purely in software on todays machines. With hardware aid (TPM) that's a different story.
Alex

Even a hardware-aided solution isn't 100% safe, AFAIK they tried that with Maya some years ago. Honestly I don't know how you can make an EXE 100% crack-safe - somewhere in your code you gotta do whatever checks you do to see if it's "genuine" - so you can simply jump over it. Even if it was incorporated into the OS somehow it'd still be possible. Even if it's encrypted, you could simply copy & paste the decrypted code in memory (at some point it must be decrypted).
Maybe the best thing one can do is to "generate" different encrypted EXEs for any given machine based on various properties of that computer. If done clever enough this may force ppl to crack every different EXE "version" - making cracked binaries distributions pointless. This means of course you'd have to switch to an online distribution system and have a pretty powerfull server farm to generate the different binaries.
But as usual, it's a trade-off type of thing - how much time do you wanna invest in that stuff and how much do you wanna piss off your "real" customers? And does it pay off?

[Kenneth Gorking]

Doesn't all computers have a unique serial number? During the install one could encrypt the binaries and game data using that number, thereby "locking" the game to the machine. But then there is problem of protecting the installer... :)

[eddie]

Doesn't all computers have a unique serial number? During the install one could encrypt the binaries and game data using that number, thereby "locking" the game to the machine. But then there is problem of protecting the installer... :)

If you're talking about Windows, that's not true. Site licenses for various companies all have one serial, if any at all.

As for unique identifiers, the closest I can think of is your MAC address on your NIC, but that can be faked, and you have to deal with the inevitable swapping/upgrading/defective NIC problem.

There's never an easy solution to it.

Personally, I view it like the breaking-into-my-car issue. I'm not going to make my car/app rock-solid impenetrable -- it's not worth the time. Just make it so that it's harder to break than the next guys, or more trouble anyhow, so people generally won't bother.

[roel]

I think that any kind of protection is a waste of time and effort.

[Kenneth Gorking]

eddie: No I didn't mean the windows serial, I meant an actual serial id inside the computers hardware. I think it's in the bios or something...

[eddie]

Kenneth: Perhaps -- I've never heard of such thing, but I'm no expert.

That said, to retrieve it would probably require access through some API, which you could easily stub anyhow, if you wanted to 'cheat' it... And even if your game goes direct to assembler to read it, someone could simply stub out that check with a 'return true' at the appropriate point. Really - there's no such thing as security, just such a thing as *incredibly difficult to break*. ;)

[roel]

Doesn't all computers have a unique serial number? During the install one could encrypt the binaries and game data using that number, thereby "locking" the game to the machine. But then there is problem of protecting the installer... :)

Like Windows XP was locked to a hardware configuration. That didn't help either. Software protection is a real waste of time, until you invest a few months in developing it, assuming that you have a wizard-like level of knowledge. And even then, it only delays your game being pirated, say, a few weeks, and probably less if your game is hot.

Hardware protection can be a bitch. Not meaning protections like:
if (!dongleAttached())
{
exit(0);
}
But rather placing calculations/algorithms that are crucial to your game in the dongle, preferable in an ASIC or something different that is hard to reverse engineer (comparing to reading the flash of a microcontroller). For the cracker it is a black box. With a lot of effort he can figure out how the results are used, but it would require a very broad knowledge.

[phil14]

Really - there's no such thing as security, just such a thing as *incredibly difficult to break*. ;)

Second that. As I said, it's really a trade-off type of thing...

[kariem2k]

IMHO the only protection that would be effective :unsure: , Nah nothing is near to effective .

I was in the reverse engineering world and after i have seen i can tell that there is nothing can protect your application (except God of course).

Now even games protected by the big and expensive protection systems like Starforce (which need to install a ring-0 driver on your system :D) ,Securom ,etc... you can run the game even without a crack just use something like daemon-tools and voila the game runs like hell :) .

And about the diffeculty of cracking ,As soon as one person cracks the protection (In about 7-30 days after the releasing of the protection :) ) and release his idea to the public the protection system is usless.

[TheNut]

Packers are in my opinion a waste. From my experience, certain machines had problems with them and were unable to run the software. Even then, you can still do whatever you want to the executable once it’s been loaded in memory, which is unpacked by your own packer. Just do a memory dump and voila.

With today’s technology, the only thing you should do to eliminate piracy is the basic (free) tasks that prevent John Doe from giving games to his friends.
a) CD Detection
b) Serial Key for online play
Done…
Net Cost: 0
Net Time: At most one day’s worth. Once the framework is done, all future software can reutilize the code.

In the future, a thin-client, fat-server architecture will help to eliminate hackers and crackers all together. A model whereby the server runs the code and submits the results back to the client.

[Reedbeta]

In the future, a thin-client, fat-server architecture will help to eliminate hackers and crackers all together. A model whereby the server runs the code and submits the results back to the client.

I hope you're not counting on anything like that happening in the near future. ;)

[eddie]

MMO's do it currently. ;)

[Reedbeta]

But for single-player games? And applications other than games?

[Mihail121]

I think that any kind of protection is a waste of time and effort.

This is just so true... every software product out there is breakable. Newest protections function only for a short time, till they are reversed. Of course developers cannot always work for free and have to try everything possible to secure their products but it is nevertheless matter of time.

[Reedbeta]

Or, all products should be 'free software' and we should adopt open source economics (http://perens.com/Articles/Economic.html) instead of the current approach in which one must pay for the right to use a program. ;)

[roel]

That article is really too large. But the first association i had with the word "open source economics" and "all products free" is "communism" ;)

[jmgk]

That article is really too large. But the first association i had with the word "open source economics" and "all products free" is "communism" ;)

yeah! and we dont talk to commies!!! go back to russia, baby eater :lol:

jmgk

ps: sorry for that... i shouldnt have posted this as one of my first posts... but i couldnt resist :blush:

[Nick]

I think that any kind of protection is a waste of time and effort.
Certainly not. If an expert spends a day on protecting an application, it takes crackers a week to break it. If he spends a week on it, it takes them a month to crack. If he spends a month, it takes a year before a crack appears...

Most games get most sales in the first few months, so it pays off a lot to stall the crackers as much as possible during that period. Not protecting your software is the most foolish thing to do, because the very next day it will be 'shared' around the world and your sales are decimated.

What is certainly true is that an amateur shouldn't try to protect his software. Even the most complex key encryption he can think of will most likely still require only one instruction to be changed to get it cracked. If you want to protect your software you have to think like a cracker and go down to the assembly level (and sometimes even binary code)...

Anyway, the most advanced protection is probably Steam. I haven't heard of anyone being able to play Half-Life 2 without a legit account.

[tbp]

... because the very next day it will be 'shared' around the world and your sales are decimated.
At last! Someone's invoked the typical MPAA/RIAA accounting distortion field where 1 pirated install = 1 lost sell. That's about time.

If you want to protect your software you have to think like a cracker and go down to the assembly level (and sometimes even binary code)...
And most certainly screw forward compatibility making sure no one will be able to run your software a couple of years later. Sounds like a plan.


Anyway, the most advanced protection is probably Steam. I haven't heard of anyone being able to play Half-Life 2 without a legit account.
I can understand the need for an online account for MMORPG or multiplayer; in every other cases, like requiring such account for single player business, it's an abusive clause where a permanent license is swapped for a revokable and by nature time limited license. That's why i've never played HL2 and never will.

I've seen copy protections in games becoming the norm in the last 20 years while being hammered with "you know if that level of theft keeps going there won't be any games to play with soon". In the same timeframe what was basically a hobby became an industry.
And i have a pile of games i've bought i can't play anymore because either i couldn't make a copy of the physical medium which is now trashed or some half assed copy protection upsets my non vintage hardware.

As a dev you want to be reassured; a copy protection makes you and your management feel better. That's fine. But please, stop pulling my legs about pseudo-economics or technicalities.
Thank you.

[TheNut]

Actually, Half-Life 2 and Steam have been circumvented. In fact, it was so bad that there was a 3rd party lobby [steam] program that allowed you to download all of Valve’s products off Steam for free because of a flaw in their account system. Once you downloaded their games, the lobby program would emulate and allow you to play offline. You didn’t even need a crack for the game, it was all being emulated. PvPGN is another fine example of emulation at work. Piracy knows no limits.

[phil14]

Actually, Half-Life 2 and Steam have been circumvented. In fact, it was so bad that there was a 3rd party lobby [steam] program that allowed you to download all of Valve’s products off Steam for free because of a flaw in their account system. Once you downloaded their games, the lobby program would emulate and allow you to play offline. You didn’t even need a crack for the game, it was all being emulated. PvPGN is another fine example of emulation at work. Piracy knows no limits.

That's waaaay to complicated. I've heard of people installing & playing cracked HL2 without a net connection.

[kariem2k]

phil14 : Yes after only 2 weaks from release it was fully functional on the torrent sites.
And the server emulation is the thing for MMO/MMORPGS Lineage,World of warcraft,etc..
are playable on private servers for free but what makes private servers a little useless is that the free servers has of course less bandwidth,System specification than the official servers so it causes lags and even much functionality in the official server are not implemented in the emulated server like.

[tbp]

Of course given sufficient time/ressource every safe can be broken into.

What i'd like Nick to explain is why as an hypothetical end-user i should be leasing some software for the same price as a permanent license - with the extra burden of providing connectivity to prove my good faith. Or why i should provide the power, hardware, storage and priviledge to run an ever more intrusive copy-protection - see Starforce ring 0 -, with no warranty whatsoever about exactly what kind of information will be disclosed at one point or another - see Sony rootkit and data mining addendum.
As much as the software is yours, the machine and the data residing on it are *mine*.

I'm still waiting for serious data about the relative cost of copy-protection vs no-protection, not some hand waving. And please include the cost for me in that bill.

[phil14]

What i'd like Nick to explain is why as an hypothetical end-user i should be leasing some software for the same price as a permanent license - with the extra burden of providing connectivity to prove my good faith. Or why i should provide the power, hardware, storage and priviledge to run an ever more intrusive copy-protection - see Starforce ring 0 -, with no warranty whatsoever about exactly what kind of information will be disclosed at one point or another - see Sony rootkit and data mining addendum.
As much as the software is yours, the machine and the data residing on it are *mine*.


As I said earlier, the "safer" the protection, the greater the possibility to piss off your "real" customers. It's really up to the company to decide whether that pays off. And talking about HL2 it definately did.

[Mihail121]

Anyway, the most advanced protection is probably Steam. I haven't heard of anyone being able to play Half-Life 2 without a legit account.

There are freely downloadable torrents on the Bulgarian web-space (piracy for personal usage is in Bulgaria no longer crime according to the newest changes in law). These torrents also include cracks that take Steam COMPLETELY out. All the people I know, playing HL2, never bought a legal copy of it and some of them don't even have access to the net, but they are still playing.

Besides, it's not true that spending more time on software protection will delay the crackers on exponentional rate. Many of them have good relations to people, working in big companies and crackers almost always work in a team.

That article is really too large. But the first association i had with the word "open source economics" and "all products free" is "communism"

Perhaps you should read more books on "communism" before you comment. Your understanding of "communism" is probably based on the ideas of Lenin and the integration of those ideas in the polical life of Russia and East Europe. These ideas however have absolutely nothing to do with "communism" and have led to only one thing, also known as "dictatorship" (another good example is North Korea). I strongly support the idea behind Open Source Economics, but it would never work in a world, where everybody wants money and power.

[phil14]

Besides, it's not true that spending more time on software protection will delay the crackers on exponentional rate. Many of them have good relations to people, working in big companies and crackers almost always work in a team.


You're right, but Nick's right too. The whole point of a software protection is to delay the crackers for the first 2 weeks, when a game is selled most in most cases. And the HL2 crack came out just after these 2 weeks :D
Bottom line - it was a good decision for Valve. Whether some customers are pissed off doesn't seem to bother them as the majority just don't care.


Perhaps you should read more books on "communism" before you comment. Your understanding of "communism" is probably based on the ideas of Lenin and the integration of those ideas in the polical life of Russia and East Europe. These ideas however have absolutely nothing to do with "communism" and have led to only one thing, also known as "dictatorship" (another good example is North Korea).

Says who - the punk? :) J/k, you're right. However, it's a another question how good the "real" communism would be - but that's another discussion.

[roel]

Certainly not. If an expert spends a day on protecting an application, it takes crackers a week to break it. If he spends a week on it, it takes them a month to crack. If he spends a month, it takes a year before a crack appears...


What I see on ftp sites, usenet and torrent sites does not really correspond with your statement.

[pater]

Certainly not. If an expert spends a day on protecting an application, it takes crackers a week to break it. If he spends a week on it, it takes them a month to crack. If he spends a month, it takes a year before a crack appears...

What I see on ftp sites, usenet and torrent sites does not really correspond with your statement.

Yea, I'll also state that Nick's statement should probably be the other way round. Staying with HL2, Valve would have invested 2 days into their copy protection. Seing how much it was delayed and what problems they had with security (Remember their code being leaked?) I'd rather guess they invested several months into it.

[Reedbeta]

roel and jmgk: read the article. It's not communism, far from it ;)

[Kenneth Gorking]

What I see on ftp sites, usenet and torrent sites does not really correspond with your statement.

Youre asuming they all spent months on their protection, which is far from true. Many games today still use copy protection schemes invented in the '80s :)

[Nick]

At last! Someone's invoked the typical MPAA/RIAA accounting distortion field where 1 pirated install = 1 lost sell. That's about time.
Where did I state that? Don't twist my words. All I said is that if you don't protect your software at all it will be cracked the very next day (assuming it is popular enough to be worth a cracker's time). If Half-Life 2 was totally unprotected then you could be damn sure sales would be decimated. No, one cracked install doesn't equal one sale, it mainly depends on when the crack appears and how easy it is to get the content and apply the crack. If it appears the next day and my little sister could download and crack the game, 90% of sales or more will go up in smoke. If it appears after a month and requires a complicated procedure then at most 10% of potential sales will be lost.

That is the simple economics of software protection. Not protecting your software because "a crack will appear anyway" will put you out of business.
And most certainly screw forward compatibility making sure no one will be able to run your software a couple of years later. Sounds like a plan.
Eh? Compilers generate assembly code (and machine code) too, you know. Quake 1 used tons of manually written assembly code, and it still runs. Although I doubt a lot of people really care... We're not talking about an operating system here. We're talking about games that come and go. I wouldn't use ungrounded fear for incompatibility as a reason not to use advanced protection.
I can understand the need for an online account for MMORPG or multiplayer; in every other cases, like requiring such account for single player business, it's an abusive clause where a permanent license is swapped for a revokable and by nature time limited license. That's why i've never played HL2 and never will.
Too bad. It's an excellent game and I enjoyed it very much. In fact recently I've played Episode One and it was just as much fun.

The deal is that you get what you paid for, and you know the terms. If you don't agree with them then don't buy it. Which is exactly what you did... but I know you're a very small minority. Valve secured its revenue and millions have enjoyed their service. Buying software is becoming more of a 'contract' to use it than to actually get the bits and bytes. If I buy a CD I don't own it (I can't reproduce it and sell it), but I bought the right to play it. Copying and distributing digital media is becoming so easy that releasing anything unprotected is practically the same as donating it to the public domain.

And if Steam was too complicated to use and too restrictive then it would have hurt Valve's sales and they had to change their offer. Again, simple economics.
I've seen copy protections in games becoming the norm in the last 20 years while being hammered with "you know if that level of theft keeps going there won't be any games to play with soon". In the same timeframe what was basically a hobby became an industry.
And i have a pile of games i've bought i can't play anymore because either i couldn't make a copy of the physical medium which is now trashed or some half assed copy protection upsets my non vintage hardware.
Sure, no implementation is perfect. But that doesn't mean all protection is evil and it can't mature. It's in the producer's best interest to invest in software protection that prevents cracking, but also has minimal influence on legitimate customers.

There will probably always be people who complain...

[Nick]

What i'd like Nick to explain is why as an hypothetical end-user i should be leasing some software for the same price as a permanent license...
There is no permanent license for a game like Half-Life 2. You either buy it under their terms or not at all.

It's that simple. There is nothing in between. And neither Valve nor millions of happy gamers (including me) care about those few people who think the world should stop turning on their command.

If I go to the supermarket for half a cup of sugar and they only sell packs of 1 kg they I have two choices: eat my pudding without sugar or pay for the whole pack. If I buy a Porche that can do 300 km/h, no matter how expensive it was I can't drive at that speed through the town center.

There has been a time when games were released with weak protection and 'permanent' licenses. Well just like the times when you bought sugar on a weight scale and you could drive your car as fast as it could go, that time is over. And believe it or not, it's for the benefit of both the industry and consumers.

[Nick]

There are freely downloadable torrents on the Bulgarian web-space (piracy for personal usage is in Bulgaria no longer crime according to the newest changes in law). These torrents also include cracks that take Steam COMPLETELY out. All the people I know, playing HL2, never bought a legal copy of it and some of them don't even have access to the net, but they are still playing.
Interesting, but when did these appear and how easy are they to find? I never heard of them and all the people I know payed for this game. It does appear to confirm that when a crack is known (even in a small group) and easy to use, it cuts in the game producers' profits.
Besides, it's not true that spending more time on software protection will delay the crackers on exponentional rate. Many of them have good relations to people, working in big companies and crackers almost always work in a team.
I didn't say exponential rate. I did say that a protection expert can keep the crackers busy for longer than the time he has spent on the protection. Also consider that the longer it takes to create a crack, the lower the interest in the crack becomes (plus it becomes harder to spread). So every day the protection can win has a big influence on sales.

[jmgk]

Nick,

Taking your sugar sample... what benefit the customers got not being able to buy sugar on a weight scale? Only the industry got benefits, forcing you to buy more sugar than you want

Its the same with restrictive software licenses... Unless you think the sugar industry is being benevolent letting you buy their product, when they could leave you drinking bitter coffee.

And about the time to crack versus the time to develop protection, i think its the reverse... a good protection must be developed for 6 months to delay the unavoidable crack for 1 week, 1 year for 2 weeks, and so on

If is not this way, then protections like armadillo/execryptor/starforce and so on where coded in a afternoon

jmgk

[hh10k]

What is certainly true is that an amateur shouldn't try to protect his software. Even the most complex key encryption he can think of will most likely still require only one instruction to be changed to get it cracked. If you want to protect your software you have to think like a cracker and go down to the assembly level (and sometimes even binary code)...

When making my indie game, I protected it by making use of this exact assumption. I made it so it was very easy to bypass the key check and then *appear* to work, long enough for the hacker to think they won, and then release it. We only found a couple distributions of our game, and neither were cracked properly (although according to the release dates, one must have been done by one of the first few buyers).

The actual key check was somewhat more complicated, but I didn't need to write any assembler. Only modifying some lookup tables in the exe :)

And if anyone says that pirates don't buy games, we did have someone visit our forums complaining about a crash that exactly matched what would happen in the pirated version. He did buy it in the end :)

[Reedbeta]

There's an interesting Gamasutra article (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011017/dodd_01.htm) about a similiar strategy being taken for crack protection in one of the Spyro the Dragon games. It's a few years old, but still an illuminating read.

Obviously, high-visibility products are going to get more attention from crackers, too. No offense to hh10k, but I doubt your game was considered important enough for any of the really elite crackers to spend time on it.

[hh10k]

Obviously, high-visibility products are going to get more attention from crackers, too. No offense to hh10k, but I doubt your game was considered important enough for any of the really elite crackers to spend time on it.

None taken. I figured that if my indie game managed to reach the levels of Half Life 2, I wouldn't be complaining about a bit of piracy :)

[Nick]

Taking your sugar sample... what benefit the customers got not being able to buy sugar on a weight scale? Only the industry got benefits, forcing you to buy more sugar than you want
It's cheaper because it's mass produced. Anyway the analogy stops here. I was just pointing out that times are changing and in a few years it will be perfectly normal to buy software under certain restrictions (that are not really restricting for normal use, and make the market more efficient).
And about the time to crack versus the time to develop protection, i think its the reverse... a good protection must be developed for 6 months to delay the unavoidable crack for 1 week, 1 year for 2 weeks, and so on

If is not this way, then protections like armadillo/execryptor/starforce and so on where coded in a afternoon
I was mainly talking about application specific protection. Adding 'traps' like hh10k describes only cost a day to implement but will keep crackers busy for many days. Plus, if that crack has already been spread then it takes longer to distribute a real crack. Another simple trick is to run two processes, that constantly check whether the other is being debugged. It may not scare off the hardcore crackers but it's daunting for beginner and even intermediate crackers. Obfuscating code also doesn't take much time at all but annoys all of them. There's a simple one right here (http://www.devmaster.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1995). Run-time code generation is also guaranteed fun. I once even generated code inside dynamically generated code...

It's a different story for 'universal' protection software. It may in fact take months to crack it, but once it's cracked it mostly works for all software it tries to protect. So it already gets the attention of the best crackers. AAA titles will obviously be attacked by the elite from the day of release, so it's likely that more time will have to be invested to delay the crackers for a while. But in a one-to-one situation the security expert has the advantage.

[roel]

Another simple trick is to run two processes, that constantly check whether the other is being debugged. It may not scare off the hardcore crackers but it's daunting for beginner and even intermediate crackers.

Winice is the standard for crackers, even newbies, and it is very hard to detect when you are running NT.

[tbp]

Winice is the standard for crackers, even newbies, and it is very hard to detect when you are running NT.
Indeed, and it's no surprise it's a target for Starforce.

Anyway on current hardware the copy protection simply cannot have the final word as there no way to know if you're running on the metal or a virtual instance.

However once m$ will have the user pay for hardware - and software - making it possible for them to reclaim complete ownership (ie vista + trusted computing) there will be a shift in the balance.
It's bound to happen, for the same reason ppl made the HL2 scam a commercial success.

[BillyColl]

I think Armadillo protection has no more future. The better and stronger now is EXECryptor http://www.strongbit.com . I advice to migrate (as I did) Sure nothing is uncrackable but this app remained unbeated 2 years. The only thing there were some problems with stripping (some skilled hackers from China could strip the EXECryptor but because its application to the software was inaccurate and wrong). The coming soon update promises to be much stronger than the current version and with Vista support

[.oisyn]

Sure, portray yourself as a user while you are in fact a strongbit employee. You... IMPOSTOR!!! We see right through you!

[BillyColl]

Sure, portray yourself as a user while you are in fact a strongbit employee. You... IMPOSTOR!!! We see right through you!

Wrong. I'm Bill Collins just EXECryptor user. I can say I tried many different PE protectors but I really loved EXECryptor. This was StrongBit's genial idea to have used obfuscation in Win32.

Furthermore if I was StrongBit employee why I should use a fake account in this forum where ad is allowed

[tbp]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

[.oisyn]

Furthermore if I was StrongBit employee why I should use a fake account in this forum where ad is allowed
Let me reply to that question with another question: why would a mere user of EXEcryptor bother to dig up a 3 month old thread on a gamedevelopment forum, register an account and post a comment?

I'm not saying you absolutely can't be who you say you are, but you have to admit that the odds don't really point in your favor, especially with the way this thread turned out :)