The Denuvo DRM Thread

[Infinitron]

https://torrentfreak.com/no-more-pirate-games-in-two-years-group-warns-160106/

NO MORE PIRATED GAMES IN TWO YEARS, CRACKING GROUP WARNS

The founder of notorious Chinese cracking forum 3DM is warning that given the current state of anti-piracy technology, in two years there might be no more pirate games to play. The claims come after attempts to breach the Denuvo security protecting Just Cause 3 pushed the group's cracking expert to breaking point.

Piracy can never be stopped. Piracy will always be around. Where there’s a will to break copy protection, there’s a way. These are all comments regularly heard in piracy circles and to date, they’ve largely been proven accurate.

But while trying to protect movies and music using technological measures is by now almost a lost cause, the same cannot be said about video games. While copying a title was a trivial process several years ago, in many cases more and more roadblocks are now being put in pirates’ way.

In the past most games would be playable for free before their official debut but increasingly pirates are being made to wait for big titles to have their protection defeated, or ‘cracked’ as it’s more commonly known. In fact, aside from many dozens of dedicated piracy forums, there’s even an entire sub-Reddit communitydedicated to providing the status of cracks.

One of the hottest topics involves the Avalanche Studios/Square Enix title Just Cause 3. Released on December 1, 2015 and despite massive demand, the game has still not been cracked. The problem appears to lie with the robustness of the technology protecting the game.

Just Cause 3 uses the latest iteration of Denuvo, an anti-tamper technology developed by Denuvo Software Solutions GmbH. While its secrets are best known to its creators, Denuvo is a secondary encryption system which protects existing and underlying DRM products.

In 2014 the product made the headlines after successfully protecting Dragon Age: Inquisition for almost a month, a very respectable time in cracking circles.

In the end it was Chinese cracking group 3DM that brought down that instance of Denuvo but the Austria-based company continued to tweak and achieved increasing protection periods on recent games in the FIFA series. FIFA 16 is currently Denuvo protected and that game still hasn’t been cracked, despite being released in September.

But Just Cause 3 is the current hot potato and despite having released an endless supply of cracks for other titles (and having had success against Denuvo in the past), the cracks (excuse the pun) are beginning to show at 3DM.

In a posting on her blog, 3DM forum founder ‘Bird Sister’ (also known as Phoenix) has revealed the frustrations being experienced with Just Cause 3.

“Recently, many people have asked about cracks for ‘Just Cause 3′, so here is a centralized answer to this question. The last stage is too difficult and Jun [cracking guy] nearly gave up, but last Wednesday I encouraged him to continue,” Bird Sister explains.

While games pirates everywhere will be willing Jun on to complete what 3DM ultimately believe will be an achievable task, Bird Sister isn’t optimistic about the future. In fact, she paints somewhat of a doomsday scenario.

“I still believe that this game can be compromised. But according to current trends in the development of encryption technology, in two years time I’m afraid there will be no free games to play in the world,” she adds.

While Denuvo is no doubt proving a difficult nut to crack, two years is an awful long time in technology and things are always prone to change. Furthermore, Denuvo is only used on a limited number of gaming titles, reportedly due to its relative expense.

But what is difficult to deny here is the window of opportunity provided by the Denuvo system. Hardcore gamers are notoriously impatient which almost certainly means that one, two or three months of waiting for a crack is coming up for a quarter of a year late to the game. Another three months after that and many gamers will be looking forward to FIFA 17 and Just Cause 4, leaving pirates in their wake.

Nevertheless, the seemingly uncrackable always seem to fall, eventually. During the past few days it was revealed that the PS4 has been compromised to run Linux. While not to the level of playing full-blown pirate games yet, that might lie around the corner. Exactly when, no one seems to know, but most gamers won’t have the patience to wait.

 

[racofer]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denuvo#List_of_protected_games

Games that are officially acknowledged to use, or reportedly use, Denuvo Anti-Tamper include:

• FIFA 15[3][10] -- Shit
• Lords of the Fallen[3] -- Shit
• Dragon Age: Inquisition[11][12] -- Shit
• Battlefield: Hardline[13] -- Shit
• Batman: Arkham Knight[14] -- Shit
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain[15] -- Shit
• Mad Max[15] -- Shit
• FIFA 16[16] -- Shit
• Just Cause 3[17] -- Shit

I say it is all good, folks.

 

[Gondolin]

Pretty much. I don't intend to play any of that shit.

But sooner of later...

 

[taxalot]

I guess I can just pirate any game that don't use Denovos and buy those shitty AAAs when they go -80%.

 

[DeepOcean]

As if AAA publishers are making games worth pirating anyway.

 

[Astral Rag]

seems legit

Spoiler

Not really, 3DM are renowned for their trolling. Also a lot of denuvo-infected games have already been cracked.

 

[Cassidy]

People who get raped in the ass by shit games with a DRM as shitty and intrusive as Denuvo and people who get their time wasted by not removing such pieces of shit from an inventory deserve each other.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Isn't 3dm some random chink, who use emulators to workaround Denovo?

 

[Immortal]

This is a lame article that doesn't even begin to explain the why.
At the end of the day the assets have to be unpacked at some point to be put into RAM and companies will always have a losing battle when they hand the binary to you.

Assuming 3DM is being serious (which I doubt) the problem is more about motivation. The best crackers I have ever met are the guys who work full time cracking VAC / Anti-CC to sell undetectable aimbots. These guys have no issue writing code that dips into Ring 0 through Drivers or running at the network layer packet shaping client data - all to avoid a checksum positive by AC.

Valves priority to this point has been to increasingly force hackers into Kernal level RE because it's expensive. His goal is to hurt their profits through longer dev times, because the cat and mouse game is an unwinnable one. (Gabe gave an interview on this strategy but I can't find it at the moment)


I have no doubt these guys could crack a game in minutes but there's no money in it. They are making over a 200K+ salary selling cheat packages to 12 year olds for Counter Strike / Rust / Whatever Else. Why stop so that neckbeard swedes can get their latest vidya for free?

IMO I think 3DM is wising up to the fact that they are getting the short end in the cracking community and I foresee a ching-chang-phoenix patreon in the future.
"Help us continue keeping software open and free... "


EDIT: Found it

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1y70ej/valve_vac_and_trust

We don't usually talk about VAC (our counter-hacking hacks), because it creates more opportunities for cheaters to attack the system (through writing code or social engineering).

This time is going to be an exception.

There are a number of kernel-level paid cheats that relate to this Reddit thread. Cheat developers have a problem in getting cheaters to actually pay them for all the obvious reasons, so they start creating DRM and anti-cheat code for their cheats. These cheats phone home to a DRM server that confirms that a cheater has actually paid to use the cheat.

VAC checked for the presence of these cheats. If they were detected VAC then checked to see which cheat DRM server was being contacted. This second check was done by looking for a partial match to those (non-web) cheat DRM servers in the DNS cache. If found, then hashes of the matching DNS entries were sent to the VAC servers. The match was double checked on our servers and then that client was marked for a future ban. Less than a tenth of one percent of clients triggered the second check. 570 cheaters are being banned as a result.

Cheat versus trust is an ongoing cat-and-mouse game. New cheats are created all the time, detected, banned, and tweaked. This specific VAC test for this specific round of cheats was effective for 13 days, which is fairly typical. It is now no longer active as the cheat providers have worked around it by manipulating the DNS cache of their customers' client machines.

Kernel-level cheats are expensive to create, and they are expensive to detect. Our goal is to make them more expensive for cheaters and cheat creators than the economic benefits they can reasonably expect to gain.

There is also a social engineering side to cheating, which is to attack people's trust in the system. If "Valve is evil - look they are tracking all of the websites you visit" is an idea that gets traction, then that is to the benefit of cheaters and cheat creators. VAC is inherently a scary looking piece of software, because it is trying to be obscure, it is going after code that is trying to attack it, and it is sneaky. For most cheat developers, social engineering might be a cheaper way to attack the system than continuing the code arms race, which means that there will be more Reddit posts trying to cast VAC in a sinister light.

This is the reality of DRM vs Cracking. Read those Vidya Game Articles with a grain of salt.

 

[Don Peste]

Isn't 3dm some random chink, who use emulators to workaround Denovo?

That's right, according to RPS:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/01/08/frustrated-pirates-prophesise-the-death-of-game-piracy/

There’s also every chance that a more profound chink could yet be found.

 

[DeepOcean]

If a salesman come to my house and tells me that they are making really tough locks, unbreakable locks for toilets, I would ask what is the point to protect shit?

He says that people are hungry for shit and can't control themselves, so shit needs to be protected.

Couldn't they just don't eat shit?

The salesman tells me that I'm an old man and I don't understand the new world. He opens his coat and show alot of shining shit. "This one is Call of SHit 15: Modern shitting, you can throw shit at your friends on multiplayer over and over and over again", he picks another one, "this other one is Tomb Shit 2: Linear Masturbation simulator, you will hear Lara pant alot, have a boner while you shoot misogeny zombies behind chest high walls", he picks another one "BattleTurd: EA rapes Star Wars and your wallet, you throw shit at your friends but with lasers."

"Shit is the new gold, I tell you!"

I just say m'okay and close the door, I'm happy to be poor then.

 

[Tigranes]

Wait till Fallout 5 uses Denuvo and all you shitheads that played FO4 want to torrent it but can't!

The Codex butthurt will be glorious.

You can't really do much with an article written off one guy's throwaaway comment, but DRM has definitely become significantly more complicated the last few years, alongside encouraging people to go legit with easy digital sales, Steam, etc.

 

[Infinitron]

Immortal Are the cheating packages uncrackable?

 

[Excidium II]

Those games are worth buying because they have steam achievements and cards

 

[Farage]

I honestly think that avoiding piracy is a backwards business strategy.
Games are supposed to be sold out of its content, not for the privilege to be able to play it. e.g:


I also did something similar with the original Binding of Isaac - i downloaded it on piratebay just to turn it off and buy the original a week later.

 

[yes plz]

3DM are shit crackers who usually seem more concerned about being first than making a good crack.

 

[Immortal]

Immortal Are the cheating packages uncrackable?

Absolutely not. There is a hilarious "arms race" going on between payed cheats and hackers who believe all hacking should be open. (although slowly the payed side is winning out)

The even more common situation is

Hackers will crack each others software and steal protection schemes and methods they used to subvert VAC / Warden / Anti-CC/ PB.
It's usually easier / cheaper to buy someone else's software, crack and steal their work.

There is zero honour among thieves.

EDIT: There is a final category.. the best one is drama. Hackers are notoriously egotistical and often "Private Source" will be released when someone in a group is pissed off about something.

This not only makes the protections completely unsafe now because the method is now in the wild, it also kills a paid hack because now it's freely available for free for anyone with a CPP compiler.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The aforementioned "arms race" has been around since the dawn of man.

One day, someone comes up with a lock. The next day, someone else comes up with a method to pick it.

As long as the lock is made by Man, it can be picked open by Man.

This is not gonna change anytime soon.

 

[PlanHex]

Somehow I can't help but read the above as some kind of paid advertising or viral marketing.

WOW
DEVELOPERS LOOK HERE
UNCRACKABLE DENONIVNAFIVO SOFTWARE
BUY IT PLEASE

 

[commie]

I stopped bothering to pirate when I discovered everything sooner or later ends up in a dollar bundle. I will buy the games I really want to play at a normal price or as normal as I can afford to support the devs then in the meantime the other shit will be discounted and end up in a bundle and then I'll bother to pick it up.


It's now a pain to crack shit then look for the updated cracks all the time since games are so buggy there's a patch twice a week. Eventually the pirates stop cracking before the devs stop patching, so you end up with a half arsed copy anyway.

 

[Night Goat]

The aforementioned "arms race" has been around since the dawn of man.

One day, someone comes up with a lock. The next day, someone else comes up with a method to pick it.

As long as the lock is made by Man, it can be picked open by Man.

This is not gonna change anytime soon.

Sounds like something a profound chink would say

 

[pippin]

Those games are worth buying because they have steam achievements and cards

DA:I is only available through Origin though.
I dunno men, DRM these days is only meant to protect a game for the first week after reelease, which concentrates most of the full-price sales that ge game's ever going to see. If the thing actually works, then devs struck some kind of gold I guess. I dunno, I stopped pirating a long time ago... Only downloaded torrents for the No On Lives Forever games.

 

[Excidium II]

The best anti-piracy measure is still grindan + multiplayer

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Sounds like something a profound chink would say

Yes, though in truth I have no idea if there's a source to this. The real fun comes in comparing those words to the head of the cracking group in the OP.

Ancient Wise Chink: Sagely words of wisdom regarding the nature of Man.
Modern Cracker Chink: Oh fuck this, we're all doomed.

Decline of Chinese philosophy?

 

[Immortal]

Those games are worth buying because they have steam achievements and cards

DA:I is only available through Origin though.
I dunno men, DRM these days is only meant to protect a game for the first week after reelease, which concentrates most of the full-price sales that ge game's ever going to see. If the thing actually works, then devs struck some kind of gold I guess. I dunno, I stopped pirating a long time ago... Only downloaded torrents for the No On Lives Forever games.

You need to subtract the cost of that DRM which in this case is the highest in the industry.. Companies need to justify that 1 week of -possible- lost sales is worth the price tag (millions) of that DRM software.
Now more than ever companies need to really look at how many sales they are losing to pirates.. (that would otherwise be a full price purchase in the first week)

FYI - I will not purchase anything with that DRM running now that I see what it does to your SSD..

If CDPR is anything to go by with their success on Witcher 2 / 3.. I think we can safely say DRM of that price range isn't nearly worth it.