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More information about SafeDisc 3

The secrets of Macrovision revealed - What will they be up to?
Posted by Jan Willem on 05 February 2003 - 23:18 - Source: [Censured]



Thanks to someone who wants to remain anonymous we can update you with the latest information about Macrovision. We have received information about the future of Macrovision products that also shows how well Macrovision is monitoring sites like ours. The company, best known for it's SafeDisc protection is aware of the fact that Lite-On CD-RW drives relative easily cut trough their protection accompanied with software such as Alcohol 120%, Blindwrite and CloneCD.

The new SafeDisc 2.90 that will be released in February is equipped with what we think is a new version of weak sectors, physical media parameters , also changelogs for SafeDisc 3.00 (DVD protection) and 3.10 are available.


SafeDisc 2.90 - Key features - release Feb 2003


New Degrading Signature - The new degrading signature has been designed to prevent Lite-On and Pioneer burners being able to make a working gold copy of a SafeDisc protected title. The new patterns also enhance protection against several other modern CD Writers. Lite-On has
achieved considerable sales success recently and this move decreases the chance of a "casual copy" being made with a users existing equipment.


Strengthened CD Signature patterns - The degrading signature patterns have been changed to stop copying programs such as Clone CD and Alcohol 120%.

ATIP spoofer detection - SafeDisc checks whether a CD-R drive has a gold CD in it and fails to run the application if this is the case. Several copying programs such as Clone CD and Alcohol run a program to fool the checks that SafeDisc does, we have countered these
programs.


Alcohol detection - The Alcohol burning and virtual drive programs have been added to our detection routines along with other popular hacker tools.


New version of Security Libraries - New techniques to stop a game being "lifted" out of memory and then subsequently produce a "cracked" version with SafeDisc removed. Please Note the best protection is afforded by creating protected functions using the SafeDisc API.



SafeDisc 3.00 - release May 2003


DVD Signatures - SafeDisc now has DVD ROM protection capability. A SafeDisc protected DVD ROM has proved resilient to copying using DVD-R
drives currently in the marketplace.

Strengthened CD Signature patterns - A technique introduced in 2.90 to hide our signatures from "specialist" burning software such as Clone CD, Alcohol and Blindwrite has been further enhanced for V3.

SafeDisc 3.10 - release August 2003

The final phase of Strengthened CD Signature patterns


Obfuscation technology - We have introduced Obfuscation technology to protect a SafeDisc game from being cracked and a "clean" exe being placed on the web. Using Obfuscation techniques developed internally and licensed from the leaders in this field, the crackers job becomes
much more difficult. This should ensure a longer window for a title in retail before cracked versions appear on the web and the P2P networks.

Strengthened CD Signature patterns - The final phase of this technique to prevent burning software identifying and negating our signatures has been incorporated. It has been designed to prevent Clone CD, Alcohol 120% and Blindwrite.




There is also more protection against cracking, something we of course encourage. It seems the coming time we will have a lot of fun in finding ways to bypass the protections to make our perfectly legal backup!