|
Copernic 4.1 reversing
"If Unregistered then ads"
|
Anti Advertisement |
|
February 2000 |
by
+Tsehp
|
edited
by Fravia+
|
 |
Courtesy of Fravia's searchlores.org
| |
Well, "Eyeball
grasping" is all the rage nowadays, and more and more dirty tricks are used to force
you to look at completely useless banners and idiotical
advertisements that noone in his right mind would click onto. Why this actually happens beats me: in my experience and world, in order to find the sort of
people that would really eventually click onto one of these banners you would have to visit a center
for mentally handicapped in their terminal phase. Maybe I'm wrong, though, and in the real "Guinea Pigs" world that the advertisers dream of, there really exist hundred thousands of slaves who happily click on any commercial abomination they see and then - drooling for pleasure - buy the crap they deserve. I doubt it, though.
Anyway it is our holy duty to destroy these tricksters: they grasp our eyeballs? We'll grasp
their - quite sensible - commercial balls. Here you go with a simple, but effective, essay by +Tsehp
|
| There is a crack, a crack in
everything
That's how the light gets in
|
| Rating
|
(x)Beginner (x)Intermediate ( )Advanced (
)Expert (
)~S~
|
Ads are sneaked more and more inside your computer. Even if you pay for
a
program, its conceptors now don't hesitate to forward advertisement you NEVER WANTED
to you. The money
they
get from their applications is not enough: they need you to click on
their
"big bucks" banners.
Lets just put an end to this...
Copernic 4.1 reversing
If
Unregistered then ads
Written by +Tsehp
Almost everybody knows this application, it's ane asy to use "meta search bot" that
uses the
most current search engines to perform your search. It's one of the most used, therefore,
similar to what Micro$oft does, they (try to) use
an almost
monopolistic situation with the aim to transform your computer into a mall.
Without
asking you
if they are authorised to.
Just try this : download the
copernic 2000 pro version 4.0 (it will self update to 4.1)
Use a regular, non burned serial (a lot of keygens exists), at first
launch, it shows no
ads and everything is working fine. But this tool is auto updating to
have the last
links to search engines, and when it does it shows you at the next
searches beautiful
banners at the top of your screen. Of course you bought it and you can
disable the
ads : tools,options,uncheck display ads while searching. But at the next
update (almost
every day) it will self check this option and show you again the ads, so
they are sure
you will see at least one. You'll be bored to uncheck this option
everytime and will
give up, covered by ads.
Of course it is possible to
destroy all this devious - and illegal - doing, and since you should
have the right
to control what happens inside your pc, I will show how to perform an easy
crack.
Softice (latest version 4.01)
windasm 8.93
regmon
The crack has been performed on my actual OS: win 2000 build 2195.3
[www.copernic.com]
Install the free version and use it - against itself - in order to find the pro
version
;-)
The older versions of this target were
gentle towards user. This does not happen any more after version 4.1
The first step is not to hurry on softices breakpointing. Sit down, use some good ole "zen cracking" attitude and
think a little about the facts you know.
Now, since there is a feature to remove the ads - for people
rich enough to
escape the advertisement hell reserved for slaves and poor sods - this means that
this target MUST keep a flag for
it, a flag that decides wether the owner has enough money to escape advertisement or not. Of course this flag (let's say either true "poor_sucker=0 give him hell" or false "poor_sucker=1 he may escape without ads") must be either inside a kore or less "hidden" file
or inside
the registry.
Dead easy, of course: We use the regmon tool
and check and uncheck the display ads option. Bingo! it's
inside the registry.
In fact it is located
at
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Copernic
Technologies\Copernic4Plus\Preferences\showad
If this key contains ffffffff, copernic will show them, if contains
00000000 it will
not.
You can also simply delete this key: the ad banners will be gone.
Unfortunately, at the next links update, this crap key appears again.
Let's kill it.
Fire softice, bpx regqueryvalueExa do "d esp->8"
Update a search, keep updating until showad is visible inside the data section.
Do several p rets until you land here :
CODE:0056EA46 call sub_0_464E68
CODE:0056EA4B test al, al <-land here
CODE:0056EA4D jz loc_0_56EB06
CODE:0056EA53 call sub_0_46F6E8
CODE:0056EA58 test al, al
CODE:0056EA5A jnz loc_0_56EB06
CODE:0056EA60 cmp ds:byte_0_599878, 0
CODE:0056EA67 jnz loc_0_56EB06
CODE:0056EA6D mov eax, ds:dword_0_5998B0
CODE:0056EA72 cmp byte ptr [eax+0Ch], 0
CODE:0056EA76 jz short loc_0_56EAA0
The call 464e68 checks for the showad key, created if your serial
is not registered into their
server, then al contains 1 if so, the jz to 56eb06 is not taken and it
shows the ads.
If you force the jz to jump, the ads will never be showed.
I usually don't like cracks, sauf for mere learning purposes, and ususally
I would encourage readers to buy programs, but our patience is really tested by
these guys, who take your money and at the same time spit on your faces with
this awful banner autoshow feature. So I encourage you to create this patch and spread
it with the keygen, until those guys remove the feature on the next version.
+Tsehp
I wont even bother explaining you
that you should BUY this target program if you intend to use it for a
longer period than the allowed one. Should you want to STEAL this
software instead, you don't need to crack its protection scheme at
all:
you'll find it on most Warez sites, complete and already regged,
farewell, don't come back.
Fravia+
Anti Advertisement
(c) 2000: [fravia+], all rights reserved