unpacking for newbies

hey all,

i appologise for newbie questions, but here goes...i have done some minor cracking of simple software, have seen a few tutorials on cracking and patching software but am still a newb...

i have a target in which the exe is quite large (40 meg or so), PiED doesn't tell me what the language is, however i'm pretty sure it's C++. the target is protected by a dongle and license file (yes probably biting off more than i can chew) and the two are linked. ideally i would rather crack the dongle protection as the the target gets updated from time to time and hence a dongle crack would allow for the new versions to still work, but for the time being i would just like to get an understanding of how the dongle process works inside the exe and relates to the "license file" and maybe patch the exe to allow it to work without the dongle (or without the license file).

my question is...i tried to "unpack" using Pied but this seemed not to work ie the resulting exe wouldn't work...is it supposed to work after unpacking, what is the main reason for the unpacking? ami going about it the right way? i also used olly to step through the exe during execution, but this is a large file and i have little idea what i'm looking for. any point in the right direction would be appreciated. oh btw the dongle is a wibu dongle.

cheers.

[florin_m]

if is wibu dongle then it should be packed with wibu encryption.

[ZeNiX]

It seems that you have no experience of "unpacking".
If your program is packed with WiBu envelope, then you will have to unpack it before you can apply patching.

So, you have to learn more about unpacking first.
Then you may need a WiBu logger to help you to understand the relationship between WiBu dongle and the license file.

Unpacking isn't an easy thing!
Sometimes I'm driven to be crazy....

yes, it's true, i have no experience with unpacking. i have followed a few tutorials, but he/she made it look so easy. i'm not totally sure what the unpacking achieves apart from finding the OEP of the exe.

I did manage to find where the license file was read and the dongle number was displayed in plain sight, however i did not get much further than that, i need more knowledge to continue (and some more time wouldn't hurt either ).

I have used a wibu logger in the past, but did not understand what it was giving me, i will investigate further.

cheers for the responses.