Howdy boys, it's me again. This is my second essay, I hope Fravia+ has published the other one... This time I will try to explain how to crack UltraEdit 5.1. This target has aleady been explained by Aesculapius; this great cracker, who is also, in my opinion, the funniest of us all (humour requires a great deal of reverse-engineering skills), has, however, only explained the serial fishing approach. Since we don't care as much for the targets as for their protections, I hope Fravia+ will allow me to explain the trial cracking approach. I will continue to explain the crack in a way that everybody with a minimum experience of cracking will be able to follow, I don't think this does any harm, quite on the contrary... Enough rabbling, let's crack!
For those of you who want to jump straight in the action, we are after the time trial protection. So, our first reflex is to set up a breakpoint on getlocaltime (close Opera before doing this, otherwise the annoying little clock will fire up Soft-Ice every second). Now we open UltraEdit. I don't know about you, but I didn't have much luck with this approach, so I went over to the dead listing method.
After WDASM has finished disassembling, we can have a look at *all* of the references. Go ahead, you should know the drill by now. I know this is boring, it is nevertheless necessary (at least for begginers like me). There are a couple of references which might be of interest to us, and we'll try digging into the following one: UltraEdit 45 day time trial expired!!
Double click on it. Now double clik again. And again. Ok, there are way too many references... Which one is the right one? Well, I hope you didn't put Soft-ice in the drawer just yet, because we are going to need it. Set you clock 2 months forward and open UltraEdit. A dialog box appears. After this, we will get our now beloved "time expired" message box. A 32 bit message box, to be more accurate... Are you thinking what I'm thinking? I hope you are, even Homer could have figured it out by now... Set a breakpoint on messageboxa and click cancel. Bang! Soft-Ice pops up here: (just a moment, let me get my dead listing)
* Reference to String ID=00069: "To... use UltraEdit you must send the registration " | :00443DBF 6A45 push 00000045 :00443DC1 8D4D14 lea ecx, dword ptr [ebp+14] :00443DC4 E8A0E30100 call 00462169 :00443DC9 6830200000 push 00002030 :00443DCE FF7510 push [ebp+10] :00443DD1 FF7514 push [ebp+14] :00443DD4 53 push ebx * Reference To: USER32.MessageBoxA, Ord:0195h | :00443DD5 FF15A4764800 Call dword ptr [004876A4] ;Soft-ice pops up hereNow, if you would be kind enough to scroll up a bit, you will notice that there is a conditional jmp...
* Referenced by a Jump at Address:00443D82(C) | :00443D90 E89C1BFCFF call 00405931 :00443D95 391D3CAE4A00 cmp dword ptr [004AAE3C], ebx :00443D9B 758A jne 00443D27 :00443D9D 8D4D10 lea ecx, dword ptr [ebp+10] :00443DA0 E890DC0100 call 00461A35 :00443DA5 8D4D14 lea ecx, dword ptr [ebp+14] :00443DA8 C645FC01 mov [ebp-04], 01 :00443DAC E884DC0100 call 00461A35... at 443D82, just 3 instructions above... Let's see what happens at 443D82...
:00443D7E 83F82D cmp eax, 0000002D ; compare eax with 2Dh, (45 decimal) :00443D81 59 pop ecx ; pop ecx from the stack :00443D82 7F0C jg 00443D90 ; jmp eax is > 45 :00443D84 399F38010000 cmp dword ptr [edi+00000138], ebx :00443D8A 0F8576FFFFFF jne 00443D06Well, that's it for the time trial. Mr Ian Mead did a good job on the serial routine, but he forgot the time trial... The crack should be almost finished...
If we scroll up a bit, we see that this check is conditional, and the jump occurs at 443CBF and at 443CBB. These locations are not so far awayare they? F12 to 443CBF and you see:
:00443CB9 391D64AE4A00 cmp dword ptr [004AAE64], ebx :00443CBF 0F8591000000 jne 00443D56 :00443CC5 399F38010000 cmp dword ptr [edi+00000138], ebx :00443CCB 0F8485000000 je 00443D56 :00443CD1 FF355CAE4A00 push dword ptr [004AAE5C]We just have to nop, or better yet, redirect these conditional jumps and we will be able to enjoy this most wonderful tool forever....
Now, Ian, I know what you are thinking: "Stupid cracker! You will still be annoyed by the nag! The hand of God Himself protects Ian Mead! The hand of God Himself! HA HA HA!!!!"
Well, I have just one thing to say to you:"Hold your horses! (and while you're at it, hold His as well), because I'm not done yet...
Now, back with the cracking... The program reaches 443CB9, and bothers to make the time trial check, which takes time, than it either knows whe are unregistered or it does not know we are registeres, depending on which way the protectionist set the flags...
If we scroll up again, we see that the program "decides" wether to check if we expired or not at 443C25 (there are some conditional jmp's before, but even if they turn out to be false, the program will eventually reach 443CB9: ...you can check for yourseld using Soft-Ice). At this very interesting location, we see the following instruction:
:00443C25 7478 je 00443C9FSo, if this jumpequal doesn't occur, we are home free, baby! Now, usually, we should not patch the jump, but the call instead, because there might be other references to the same call (See Rude-Boy's essay about this). In this case there is no need to dwelve into the call, we can just change 7478 to 7400, which has the same effect as nopping the jump, but is more correct and less dangerous.
So, open up UEDIT in Hacker's View or your favourite Hexeditor and
patch this
target! Close everything, restart Uedit and yahoo!! No more nags! Now,
close
uedit,
set your clock two months forward, and restart... Nada...
Ofcourse we still aren't registered... if you want to register you'd
better take a
look at Aesculpius' essay (or even better: pay for it!).
Before I end the essay, I would like send my thanks to all of those who sent essays to Fravia's site, to MIB and the #c4n crew, and my special thanks to Fravia+. I hope Ian Mead didn't get offended, he shouldn't have, coz I'm just a punk kid, and I could *never* program like he does; besides, I don't think anyone would bother to listen, let alone read my stupid jokes above just to get a quick'n easy UltraEdit crack, which is available all over the Web anyway, so I don't think I hurt him financially... I'm only explaining an interesting protection scheme; and I love this editor, I have already paid for it -albeit anonymously- so understand me right: it's THE BEST editor around, PAY for it, it's not expensive and worth every penny!!
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