309The magnitude of piracy committed on all kinds of digital content such as
music, software, and movies has become monstrous. This problem has huge
economic repercussions and has been causing a certain creative stagnation—
why create if you can’t be rewarded for your efforts?
This subject is closely related to reversing because cracking, which is the
process of attacking a copy protection technology, is essentially one and the
same as reversing. In this chapter, I will be presenting general protection con-
cepts and their vulnerabilities. I will also be discussing some general
approaches to cracking.
Copyrights in the New World
At this point there is simply no question about it: The digital revolution is
going to change beyond recognition our understanding of the concept of copy-
righted materials. It is difficult to believe that merely a few years ago a movie,
music recording, or book was exclusively sold as a physical object containing
an analog representation of the copyrighted material. Nowadays, software,
movies, books, and music recordings are all exposed to the same problem—
they can all be stored in digital form on personal computers.
This new reality has completely changed the name of the game for copy-
right owners of traditional copyrighted materials such as music and movies,