How cracking started...

[Aesculapius]

This is an small historical article that I recently realized was published on how the wonderful world of cracking started. In reality it started before this but let's say the teaching was public at this moment. This forum is the oldest devoted to this subject (for English speaking crackers) with Over 15 years online (somebody correct me please) so I guess it's important to know the roots of the hobby that many of us have enjoyed for so many years.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Red_Cracker


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Interesting read indeed we have come a long way

[Git]

(Haven't read Red's article yet)

I've been here 14 years which is less than a lot of people, and cracking was well established then. I remember cracking an Amiga game straight off audio data cassette which had an encrypting loader. The mysterious depths of XOR I believe . Anyway, that must be somewhere between 20 and 25 years ago, and there was plenty of cracked 'warez' around at that time. There were cracking groups before that, communicating by FidoNet and sharing data via direct modem dial-up ftp sites. The internet was in it's infancy and not something the majority of people had acess to unless you were in USA universities. Discussion was by Usenet news groups, distributed via Fidonet.

Of more interest and concern is when did cracking start dying|?

Git (old)

[cybercoder]

Cracking started dying once there was no longer a need, i.e. tablets, iPad's, phones... PC's starting to become obsolete..

[The Old Pirate]

By the way, has +ORC's riddle been solved?

[bolo2002]

Originally Posted by Git

(Haven't read Red's article yet)

I remember cracking an Amiga game straight off audio data cassette which had an encrypting loader.

Amiga wasn't that old to use audio cassette,it were probably a c64

[DARKER]

Originally Posted by The Old Pirate

By the way, has +ORC's riddle been solved?

check these links, here is mentioned the riddle and some solving/meaning:
http://www.woodmann.com/crackz/Orc.htm
http://www.home.aone.net.au/~byzantium/found/

[Git]

You're right, of course it wasn't. It was an Amstrad CPC 464

[gsaralji]

yes,
any one can do any...
so first learn Cracking Application like
IDAPro, Olly, DotNet Reactor etc.....
You can do

Even I have almost zero knowledge still links shared on your discussion opens new ways of learning.

[bolo2002]

Originally Posted by gsaralji

yes,
any one can do any...
so first learn Cracking Application like
IDAPro, Olly, DotNet Reactor etc.....
You can do

No,you can learn and crack but then you must be good enough to understand new protections.

you can learn to play piano,be able to play many songs but unable to compose.

[gsaralji]

Hello Dear
Almost last 0ne yrs not in this work anyway i came back
i started again

[an0rma1]

Good old +ORC, i published a pair of virtual cpus for serial checking with him! Good old times!
Of course my virtual cpus were totally inspired by infamous SolarDesigner's one.
Regards!

[Evilcry]

In Italy we had ring0 and later UIC that made the story of cracking/reversing scene in my country

[SKiLLa]

I recall that even in the early 90s and late 80s it was mainly teens and students. And it was all about credits and respect. Making money was usually done by others ...

You traded 'knowledge' kinda like the demo-scene. Oh wait; there was a HUGE overlap (they called it 'affiliation' it for a reason, but that's probably actually less correct) with the demo scene, as is well documented over time (21st Centry, EPIC (from the Pinball), etc.)

Things have changed a lot; but I think the scene is still being 'innovated' and driven by teens and students nowadays, perhaps with some older mentor (kinda like here) wherever it is (China, Russia).
EDIT: The major change probably being the commercial aspect in some cases: from a few copied cassettes and floppies in the schoolyard to thousands of (CrazyBytes !) CDs and DVDs to global online-distribution on a major scale; look how Razor 1911 got caught/dismantled --> CC fraud with high-end $500 000 worth Cisco routers.

Besides people growing up and having a busy personal and business life, a common reason is: loss of data. I recall my SCSI HDD crashing (like: it wouldn't spin no more) with all kinds of sources I didn't have proper (read: latest, complete, working) backups of; it effectively ended my Assembly programming and RE for that specific platform. Did not have the means or motivation to recover; I moved on the PC-only from there on...

PS: I found these 2 blog-posts really representative and factual correct to my own experience and plain fun to read as well (part 2 is the interesting one, part 1 is just introduction):

_hxxp://www.filfre.net/2015/12/a-pirates-life-for-me-part-1-dont-copy-that-floppy/
_hxxp://www.filfre.net/2016/01/a-pirates-life-for-me-part-2-the-scene/