syncche.htm

HyperChem 5.0 - 'Same old sauce'
"Don't lure us any more"

by +Sync

(28 October 1997)

Courtesy of Fravia's page of reverse engineering

Well, +Sync (our "tester maximo") worked on this essay as an answer to an email that we got some days ago. +Sync has accomplished a very "altruistic" task indeed: he tested a protection scheme in order to see if it was relevant or not for our studies. Unfortuntaley it was not.
I believe we should all learn some lessons:
1) Never ask for help when you have not "done your math" yourselves.
Admittely, it may be difficult at times to know if a "new protection" is only an old known one in disguise, or if it is really new and daunting, yet we'll never accept, from now on, requests regarding "apparently new" protection schemes that are not accompanied by a THOROUGH first investigation by the guy that asks for help. +Sync's time and capabilities (and +gthorne's and mine, and of all other 'new' +HCUkers... not to speak of +ORC's ones) are too precious to be wasted on such banalities).
2) New and daunting protection schemes are indeed very rare.
As soon as one appears there are many chances that it will reveal itself as an 'old sauce', like this one. It's a pity, but it is -alas- so (let's hope that clever programmers will learn enough from our essays to provide us more tough challenges :-)
3) I hope that some funny faces are not mistaking the +HCU for a place where you are allowed to hunt for ready made cracks.
WE ARE NOT INTERESTED in the software that we crack (with very few exceptions), as funny as it may seem to some, we are interested (a lot) in 'pure' software reverse engineering activities, it just happens that protection schemes constitute a nice challenge. Anyway we will NEVER again publish any reverse engineering of a program if we may again suspect, like we do in this case, that we have been lured to work on a protection scheme only in order to crack a banal specific target. You need a ready-made crack? Are you a "me-too" luser, incapable of reversing software yourself? Are you too lazy or stupid to study the (aboundant) material provided all over the net? Beggar off, there are plenty of self-appointed crackers ready to futter you software in spades till you have slurped so much that you'll explode. You are here at the wrong address.
And now, duly feeling guiltiness and remorse, enjoy this nice "surgical" clean cut essay by +Sync

HyperChem 5.0  - 'Same old sauce'
   
Well, this was sent to me through the +HCU as a possible new project. 
I would have to say that not only does this not qualify as a new project, 
it is simply the same thing that we have presented over and over again.  
At most, this might qualify for the "time protections" section.  
Anyway, here it is. 
Available at http://www.hyper.com the program is called HyperChem, 
which seems to be a very versatile use for you Chemical Engineers out 
there.  
First thing, as always, is to run the program.  
It quickly tells you that you cannot run this version without an 
"authorization code".  You get this code from them, and enter it in
HCLicense.EXE in order to run this program.  
This is the very interesting part of this target's protection.  
Enter any set of numbers as the Authorization Code and it will
register almost every time.  
It doesn't like alpha characters though. 
Can it really be that easy?  Unfortunately not.  
Try running the program again and nothing has changed.  
So what the hell is HCLicense doing?  Well, check it out with WDASM or 
Softice or IDA or any way you want, and it comes down to this:
All it does is take the number you put in, and store it in a key in the
registry.  
The key is :
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Hypercube\HyperChem\5.0\Registration\DemoKey
Well, so now all we need to do is find out where in the program it
checks this key.  So WDASM CHEM.EXE and look for 'DemoKey'.  
Right below where you find it, you will find the following code

* Reference To: ADVAPI32.RegQueryValueExA, Ord:0136h
                                  |
:0041B730 FF156CA65000      Call dword ptr [0050A66C]  ;get the key
:0041B736 85C0              test eax, eax
:0041B738 753E              jne 0041B778
:0041B73A 8B9540FEFFFF      mov edx, dword ptr [ebp+FFFFFE40]
:0041B740 899538FDFFFF      mov dword ptr [ebp+FFFFFD38], edx
:0041B746 8B8538FDFFFF      mov eax, dword ptr [ebp+FFFFFD38]
:0041B74C 8B08              mov ecx, dword ptr [eax]	;ecx holds code from HCLicense
:0041B74E 898D34FDFFFF      mov dword ptr [ebp+FFFFFD34], ecx
:0041B754 8B9534FDFFFF      mov edx, dword ptr [ebp+FFFFFD34] ;now in edx
:0041B75A 3B9530FDFFFF      cmp edx, dword ptr [ebp+FFFFFD30] ;check if right
:0041B760 7516              jne 0041B778     ;jmp if it's not right

So, we need to prevent the jump at 41b760 from being made, as follows:
:0041B760 7516              jne 0041B778        ;jmp if it's not right
to
:0041B760 4048              inc eax    dec eax  ; ie do nothing

So now we will be able to run the program right?  Well, try it out.  
It tells us that our evaluation has expired!  Before we even get to 
run it once! What kind of shoddy programming is this?  
Well, it's not hard to fix.  Look for an occurrence of GetLocalTime 
(or BPX it in S-ICE) and you'll quickly find the code snippet below.

* Reference To: KERNEL32.GetLocalTime, Ord:00F5h
                                  |
:0041A176 FF1514A95000            Call dword ptr [0050A914]
:0041A17C 83EC10                  sub esp, 00000010
:0041A17F 8BCC                    mov ecx, esp
:0041A181 8B55F0                  mov edx, dword ptr [ebp-10]
:0041A184 8911                    mov dword ptr [ecx], edx
:0041A186 8B45F4                  mov eax, dword ptr [ebp-0C]
:0041A189 894104                  mov dword ptr [ecx+04], eax
:0041A18C 8B55F8                  mov edx, dword ptr [ebp-08]
:0041A18F 895108                  mov dword ptr [ecx+08], edx
:0041A192 8B45FC                  mov eax, dword ptr [ebp-04]
:0041A195 89410C                  mov dword ptr [ecx+0C], eax
:0041A198 E814160000              call 0041B7B1     ;check if expired yet
:0041A19D 83C410                  add esp, 00000010
:0041A1A0 85C0                    test eax, eax     ;are we?
:0041A1A2 7504                    jne 0041A1A8      ;yes, jmp away
:0041A1A4 33C0                    xor eax, eax      ;no, go on good guy
:0041A1A6 EB31                    jmp 0041A1D9

So again we need to force the jump not to be made
:0041A1A2 7504                    jne 0041A1A8      ;yes, jmp away
to
:0041A1A2 4048                    inc eax   dec eax ;don't ever jump

That's it, HyperChem 5.02 Evaluation version now runs as it would if you
had entered a valid code, and were still in the evaluation period.  
There is still a nag screen at startup, which I did not bother writing 
details about (if you don't know how to remove it, you need to study a 
little more).  
I did begin to reverse the Authorization Code, it is created from the 
name and organization you type in at install, however a patch was 
necessary to clean up the expiration, so a keymaker would only do half 
the job anyway.  
Hope this helps someone.
+Sync  sync1@iname.com

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by +Sync (28 October 1997)

by +Sync

(28 October 1997)