hacking games with starforce
 

i trying my eager to crack cycling manager 4... have fonud the starforce dll file and disassmbled it... what should i look for in there?? im not new at cracking, i new at starforce cracking! :)

tell me how :D i want to play cyclingmanager 04
the original vers. doesn't work :( :mad: :mad: :mad:

i havent made a thing yet... i found the offset in the hex editor i think... but what am i going to do now? plz help me!

heh disassembly is only the first step, you'll definately need to debug it, so u gotta figure out how to bypass the anti debug, then you have to figure out what the ring 0 drivers do , then what the ring 3 code does, then figure out what the vm's do, then rebuild exe, repair imports, handle hidden file system, handle vm p-code (if present), tons of work....

i know... but im pretty new at cracking software with starforce protection... so what do i have to do, when i'm disassembling?

LOL!!
its like "i managed to open the hood from my car, what sould i look for?"

i'm also not new at cracking. i made about 40 NoCD cracks and 19 are also on gamecopyworld. but at those times the executables were usualy not encrypted and had a simple cdcheck. can you even imagine how complex starforce is? replacing "74" with "EB"? its not that simple ... ;)

Kid, just FORGET trying to crack SF3!!

Perhaps the mods ought to put up a sticky topic telling people to STOP asking for SF3 cracks or how to crack it!

If the top scene crackers out there are having difficulty with it, what chance you got huh?

Just stick with your original CD's for now.

does SF3 Mean end of game rips?
 

seems lately games like soldiers heros of ww2 and codename panzers are using this new SF3 and both have been out for about a week and not one has been close to being ripped yet does that mean the end of rips as we knew them or is just this a big hurdle to overcome?

Sinpoet, Read the Forum Rules

lol cracks dont usually come out within the week watever the protection...

was just curious
 

just ordered soldiers but was curious about the sf3 issue, sorry wasnt trying to break any rules

I have to say, this Starforce 3 protection has been a godsend for games publishers - not having their games ripped and available for download before they are even out on the shelves

I fully endorse whatever they have to do to stem the flow of warez etc

hopefully, with warez on the decrease because of protections such as this we will see the price of games coming down - places like play.com sell the latest releases for £17.99 - thats next to nothing!!!

just my 2 cents!

Yeah, if you want the game THAT freaking bad and you love the game support the game company and go buy it! Obviously you haven't because you wouldn't be pissing yuour pants every time i look on here...

hey guys just to let ya starforce 3 is not uncrackable. irecently bought desert rats vs afrika corps and thats sf3 protected, had to wait about a month but the crack came out and it worked perfectly

A 'NOCD' is one thing, but a stand-alone install and play disk is a different matter. If you can't make a working backup which allows you to install the game and play from, then you don't have a backup made! I fear that VERY soon ALL games will use Starforce 3. This might sound childish, but unless they crack Starforce 3 so a backup can be made, that's me finished with PC games for good! I can understand completely why developers want to use Starforce, but it's just legitimate users who suffer. Also, I suspect that if Starforce isn't sussed, we won't see many cracks. After all, most NOCD fixes are made by the Crack groups for their own RIPS, but if they can't rip the game, why will they bother to make nocd fixes? I still think the answer lies in making some sort of image of the install, together with registry changes (See my earlier post on this). I'm sure the crackers could suss this in days, but of course they aren't interested in this method because they want to make illegal RIPS to put on the Web. This is what I'm talking about, it's not rocket science:

1.Install Trackmania from original (MUST be from original)
2.Use NOCD fix
3.Create image of Hard Drive using Norton Ghost or TrueImage
4.Hyperthetically your dog eats the original disk :-)
5.Restore Drive image and game plays fine

OK, I know it's obvious. This method won't work when you upgrade your hardware of course, as the image won't match, but I'm certain this is the way around Starforce (for legitimate original owners of course). I've got a few coder frinds who are working on program as we speak (with some success I might add).

A godsend? Doubt it. They may have to stop believing their own hype about how many billions of dollars they lost due to piracy. They probably had $1k increase in sales.

Not to forget that even originals sometimes refuse their work. That isn't godsent, that is taking the piss out of legit customers.

Hmmm...I wonder what *company* you were refering to? :D *w00t*

Cost Of Piracy
 

They say they loose on avg 1 billion a year in sales but they don't take in consideration how many people actually buy software after trying the full versions of their product found all around the net. There was a post on here saying if they can get piracy under control that will lower the cost of games, well I don't see that ever happening as greed is good just look at the record companies they were even sued and had to pay a huge settlement because they were over charging consumers but did it effect the sales price of a cd? heck no theyre still going for $17-22.00 a piece so gaming companies aren't gonna budge either just because they nipped piracy in the butt....temporarily :)
SiN

Good idea!
Put up a sticky about the SF3!

As far i i can see, not sure, but StarForce v3 has been cracked is "GangLand" not using that protection too ?

As I understand it there are different levels of how to implement SF3 protection.

One is to just protect the EXE, not too difficult to deal with. I believe Gangland and Singles are examples of this

Another method involves not only protecting the EXE but encrypting data files too, look at Dead To Rights for an example of that! The 'crack' was nearly a whole CD!

Then there are the 'emulated functions'. As I understand it from a reliable source, it's these 'active protected functions' in the EXE that are the bitch that has stopped the release of titles like Beyond Divinity, TOCA2 and Killswitch as they are time consuming to find/trace!!

Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of those points :)

U re right barry, but lets say the problem is not to trace such functions, but "create" the VM SF code that is removed when a dump is made.

Thats the problem with SF, finding and linking the so called p-code table to make an "universal" crack that just works for every game release, and not only in the native cracked release.

Good luck!

As far as I know, StarForce3 sneakily install hidden hardware devices (software dongles).

This degrades system speed/stability, and soon tools like Spybot S&D or AdAware will have no other option than to scan for, and remove these illegal "installs".

I'm not sure a 'universal' crack could be made Morglum, maybe coded tools to help in the tracing/creating these functions that don't get dumped, or maybe you mean once dumped, then fix it with a universal tool? Still not sure it's that easy, the developers of this protection meant it to be tough to crack, and it's proving just that!

Well, i think it is possible. The problem is to hook EVERY p-code, used or not, and not just the minimum required to launch with a specific release of the game. Thats like the API calls in SecuROM. In SF there is a p-code table and a "translation table" found in near .dll ( not protect.dll) The problem is to get all translated. With US/UK/german releases, it is fixed just the p-code to make working such releases, but not every one, so other releases in other countries do not have "support". the way of obtain such table will make a "universal" way of procceding.

Good luck!

Ok, what about those "Active protection functions",something similar to sexxurom triggers? Just checked out a "known title" and *wow* hooking every p-code sure as hell gonna take some time....nice antidebug, it took me 3 beers to get around (and some reboots) :D I should join your forums, Morglum..this starts to look like a real challenge heh

Well, that "Active protection functions" are too easy to find in SecuROM. It is just API call. SF works in another way.

Good luck!

thats called 'triggers'

sf3 works in many ways, api rerouting, api hooking, virtual file system and p-code procs, oh and the sf3 api system doesnt work in another way, look deeper and think a little

Well, what i mean to say is that SF is not based on that "active functions" that are know as triggers. The difficulty of SF resides in its p-code fixing. In SecuROM it's quity easy to find such triggers, cause once dumped, iAT fixed and OEP found (with crc fixing of course), there is just to nop or jnz to jz some call to cercain API and done. Anyway, not every SecuROM released game have triggers on it, and just only a few titles have it ( commandos 3, vietcong...)
Thats like the "silent alarm" "technology" of newest safedisc, and both of them copied the Codemasters/Sta clara Fade scripting system to do that.

Anyway, SF is strong for its p-code table, not for its API system. (besides relationated, i think not mixable)

Good luck!

StarForce3 can not be cracked? Uhhh, I am scared, I don't want to put a list up here, but there are a lot of SF3 title already hacked.
I am just wondering why only the 1.0 game versions get hacked, what's the point in that??? There must be a stupid masterplan behind it.

Sf3
 

Welll SF3 isnt the real problem, the main problem is always the VM Pcode.
which means even if u dumped en encrypted exe there are still crypted functions that point somewhere but not into the place the data code is located.

If pcode is present can be easely detected by everyone

always there is a "protect.dll" - it has .sforce section but musten be named protect.dll - Version of this .dll is the starforce version and if the dll file is biggern then 4MB pcode is present.

Normaly per 1MB bigger then 4MB its 7 pcoded functions that got to be fixed after dumping and rebuilding the exe and their apis.

there are mainly 4 different versions of starforce

light (dll smaller 2mb)
normal (dll between 2 and 4mb)
hard (dll bigger then 4mb)
hardest (dll bigger then 4mb and a .dat file addionaly on CD - like seen in Dday demo and german retail)

hard and hardest i dont think you wont see a crack as no cracker takes a month or longer to fix the pcode which is a allbyhand job. no game is worth the time you need to crack that.

The game "Black Mirror" has
Bmirror.dll with over 5 MB with starforce,
exe over 2 MB,
data.adb over 2 MB with starforce
and two small files with 59 KB also with starforce.

It was published in October or November last year and only a few days later the group immersion released a fully working crack.
So it seeems to be possible, doesn't it???
Unfortunately immersion seems to no longer exist :-(

Black Mirror isnt that hard as not much pcoded functions.

And yes IMS did a nice job on it but it was also handmade.
I dont say it is impossible but twhen u get f.e. Obscure or D-Day which have 27 or 34 pcoded functions you dont want to invest the time. Black mirror had 5 pcodes, the german one 7 or so dunno. but thats alot less.

there are some freaks that can surely crack sf3 fastern then that but todays crackers have a rl :)

@michse

You seem to be an expert in that kind of things. ;-)
So let me ask you:
If it's too time intensive for those harder protected games,
would it be possible or realistic to make a "global" starforce crack, I mean an application that modifies installed starforce drivers in the system or
an application that installs own drivers that go deeper in the system as the starforce drivers and knocks them out?

unicrack
 

Yes from my point of view it is possible to either emulate the starforce drivers or at least patch em that every copy with dpms included will run.

If your able to code a tool that hook every single pcode function ... no matter what they do or if they are protection relevant or not then your able todo a generic tool. In my eyes it is possible and there are some guys trying this already as i saw already outputs from such tools in develop but it is a real hard stuff. You need alot more skills then just debugging, dumping hooking i think and btw im not a real expert in it but i try to understand more and more until the russians find a new **** that gets you back to the basics again :)

Only one game isn't cracked with Starforce3 protection the name is Move2play, it's a good eyetoy Playstation2 clone, check to www.move2play.com

not find any crack, in P2P only fake virus !!! :mad:

Can u help me ?

only one game? ¬¬ theres a few starforce games that havent been cracked...

IRONIC MODE ON

Only one game

IRONIC MODE OFF

Ironic.... because my request of crack haven't been answered

:D

well taugh **** dude we dont make cracks here, so i dont see the point on u "requesting" u can just wait and hope it will come out, just like the DTM2 people still waiting. GCW only hosts cracks, they dont make em.