Post by Colin B MaharajCould this mean that it will be impossible for me
to write strong copy protected code with this tool...
http://research.microsoft.com/sn/detours/
Detour is a tool for patching binary EXEs functions
with a hard jump to a new function routine address.
Well, this has been around for nearly 10 years now, according to the date on
the original paper (published 1999).
I don't think this type of software increases the "crackability" of your
copy-protected code, and it certainly doesn't make it impossible. A tool
like this makes it a bit more convenient to *apply* copy-protection cracks
to existing code once the crack has already been found, but I don't think it
makes it easier to *find* cracks in the first place -- you'd still have to
bust out the debugger and your favorite hex editor to do the cracking in the
first place. From what I can tell, Detours looks like it just takes the
place of the tool used to patch the executable with the cracked code. I do
not think it opens up a whole new world of cracking software to the average
script kiddie, if that is what you are concerned about, though. What
concerns me more about this type of thing is that it opens up a whole new
avenue of strange, proprietary and/or undocumented things that certain
vendors can do to existing software, without any real involvement from the
software's original vendor at all. Still, it's been around long enough that
any serious implications it might have had would have been felt by now, I
think.
Jason