Misplaced Pages

Crackme

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Small program designed to test a programmer's reverse engineering skills
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Crackme" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

A crackme is a small computer program designed to test a programmer's reverse engineering skills. Crackmes are made as a legal way to crack software, since no intellectual property is being infringed.

Crackmes often incorporate protection schemes and algorithms similar to those used in proprietary software. However, they can sometimes be more challenging because they may use advanced packing or protection techniques, making the underlying algorithm harder to analyze and modify.

Keygenme

An example of a keygenme.

A keygenme is specifically designed for the reverser to not only identify the protection algorithm used in the application but also create a small key generator (keygen) in the programming language of their choice.

Most keygenmes, when properly manipulated, can be made self-keygenning. For example, during validation, they might generate the correct key internally and compare it to the user's input. This allows the key generation algorithm to be easily replicated.

Anti-debugging and anti-disassembly routines are often used to confuse debuggers or render disassembly output useless. Code obfuscation is also used to further complicate reverse engineering.

References

  1. "crackmes.de Frequently Asked Questions". Archived from the original on 2006-07-14. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  2. "Windows Anti-Debug Reference". Archived from the original on 2008-05-15.
  3. "Code Obfuscaton". Archived from the original on 2008-10-21. Retrieved 2008-10-31.

External links

  • Crackmy.app - Holds a variety of user-submitted crackmes. Users can submit solutions to the crackmes to strengthen the learning process. Includes reverse engineering resources and tools.
  • Crackmes.one - Includes user-submitted crackmes for Windows and Linux, in languages such as C++ and Java.
  • X64dbg - A debugger used both by beginners and experienced people.
Stub icon

This programming-tool-related article is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

Categories: