Habrainterview with the former scener

Interview with a former stage designer, Russian, a member of the top crack group in the mid-2000s. Not too many questions were asked , so he answered everything. I combined similar questions, if something is lost - write, I will add. The structure and principles of the scene have been known for a long time, so here we hardly touched them, but in order to fill in the possible gaps in the near future I will continue to translate the site aboutthescene, the first part of which I published earlier. Despite the fact that there have already been many articles about the scene, in almost all of them the question pops up whether the sceners get any profit from their activities. And in this interview he was asked again. The answer to it and everyone else is under the cut.


How did you even begin to crack programs, how did it all begin? How did you get on stage?

I remember when I first saw in the late nineties keygen to some dense version of ACDSee32, signed by nutcracker / CORE. How cool should you be to parse such a program, study the algorithm and write your own generator ??? About these were my thoughts at that moment. Keygens of the top groups have always been associated with something very cool and unattainable, like the work of a master craftsman. I especially admired the work of guys like tE! / TMG and MackT / uCF. I was in seventh heaven, when after a few years I was able to communicate with them and even work side by side.

It started harmlessly, with a passion for programming. BASIC, C ++, assembler - I always wanted to get to the core. I did not have Internet then, and I lived in a small town, somehow I managed to get books and learn from what I have. I taught assembler at the enchanting course for survivors (if anyone remembers :)), downloaded to floppy disks at my father’s work.

Over time, the passion for assembler began to pull me to the dark side, and it all started, it seems, with articles on woodmann.com. After that I went headlong into reversing, talked on forums, read / wrote articles, visited a couple of public groups, nothing really interesting until I came across a trial keygenme of one of the top 0day groups. I wrote to one of the members of this group with whom I had contact to clarify whether their keygenme is still valid. He replied that he was no longer there, but if I was so eager to get into their group, I could start right now and sent a short list of programs that I had to keygenize. Each of them gave me a lot of unforgettable hours in the debugger :) After several months of hard work, I became a full member.

Was there a time when you or someone in your group was close to being arrested?

In one of the groups I was a member of, the authorities covered the server. Another came under the FBI operation, many were arrested. But since I am Russian, then nobody cared about me. In Russia, you could be arrested unless if you cross the road to monsters like 1C, the story of Sobol is a sad example. Since I did not do anything like this, I slept soundly.

Was all this just for fun or did it bring money too?

Just for fun.

How do you feel about copyright? Has the attitude changed over time? To free non-commercial file sharing like our trackers?

Negative attitude towards the insanity of copywriters and authorities.
I used to have extremely radical views, but now, apparently, I have matured :) If the product is decent, I cry with joy, it is often even more convenient. If I released my product, I would not fight with pirates, a waste of resources.

I am normal with trackers, I use it myself.

What do you think about any registries of forbidden sites / blocking?

I don’t think that such idiots are sitting in the government as they appear to us. They just want to control the internet.

What do you think about the situation that is now happening with anonymity on the Internet, what do you think we will end up with?

There was never anonymity on the Internet, we were always followed and it was always obvious (for me, at least), just now it has received great publicity. I do not think that something will seriously change in the near future, maybe tor and i2p will become more popular and more accessible for a simple layman.
I also note that the cops have many ways to catch a hacker besides calculating by ip :) The recent arrests of Eric Owen Marquez and Ross William Ulbricht are an example of this.

How true is The Scene?

I specifically looked at the first few episodes to answer this question. I am not familiar with the internal cuisine of rip-groups, in order to give some adequate assessment, I can only say that the atmosphere of the race for the release was well conveyed.

Have you been breaking software or have you broken toys too?

I released exclusively keygens for programs, like most members of the group. Toys sometimes broke off for interest, but did not release.

Where did you get software for releases?

Basically, shareware, sometimes suppliers managed to get software before release through their channels.

How often did you come across some original defenses, which took hundreds and thousands of man-hours? A few words about the most memorable of them.

Once I wrote keygen for a program on VB6, which was also compiled into p-code and used cryptography. It was a very difficult task to write keygens for programs protected by Armadillo, but then it was put on stream. There was a program in which the key verification algorithm was obfuscated and wrapped in vm, and vm itself was also processed by a metamorph from above, fortunately, the algorithm itself was not very complicated and just analyzing the inputs and outputs a lot became clear. Some authors improved protection after the crack was released and we played cat and mouse until someone got tired :). It was a lot of interesting things, this is what I especially remembered. A lot of time was spent researching libraries (miracl, CryptoPP, FGInt, etc.), removing protectors. Now I do not see anything complicated in it, but then it was a real challenge.

It’s easy to find a worthwhile defense: if some software is constantly released only as Cracked, but it has a serial input field, then it’s time to get a debugger and show who is the coolest :)

How much software protection techniques advanced on average and maybe for some individual instances especially? Was there software for which crack / keygen was impossible to write? (mb a piece of code encrypted through the serial, etc.)

I don’t think that key verification techniques could seriously advance somewhere. You can always buy a valid key or the full version (and then charge back). If you can’t write keygen (for example, in the case of RSA-1024 or online checks), then you can always write Patch + Keygen.

In their best times, how many releases did the band make?

I don’t remember the records, but there were also a few dozen a day. Quality is always more important than quantity.

Is the scene concept relevant at all now? How do you see the future of the scene and file sharing in general? Will there come a time when the activities of the sceners will become meaningless / impossible?

The scene will never die.

What changes have occurred with the scene, after the demonstrative, mass operations of special services aimed at its destruction?

Someone went deep underground, someone even tied to the scene, someone (like me) didn’t care.

What methods of preserving anonymity were used? Tor and I2P have not yet been, as far as I know.

Anonymous proxies, vpn-s, for irc message encryption (FiSH plugin), BNC server. They did not use proprietary software because of the likelihood of a built-in backdoor. Had different nicknames in 0day and on public sites.

How did you communicate with other scene groups? Was there a struggle between the groups?

On irc channels, via icq. I would say that there was a competition: who is cooler and faster. Often in the NFO, other groups received not only greetings, but also rays of hatred. In general, among the members of the top groups there has always been a warm and friendly atmosphere, like among rioting athletes.
A picture of past years in the subject -

What software is used?

My choice: IDA + SoftICE, their own tools, mainly based on cryptography.

Did you learn everything or were you mainly taught by other sceners? Teaching / would like to teach someone your business?

Everything is the same here as in programming. Basically, my older comrades helped with something, I learned something about the tutorials, but, alas, there are no tutorials on the most interesting topics. The skill grows very much when working in an experienced team, we were always ready to help each other, answer questions, suggest with an incomprehensible problem.

Tell interesting life stories.

I don’t even know how to answer.
Once in one program, next to the public key, I saw an interesting line, not verbatim: "suck it cracker, we have RSA-1024 here." Released Patch + Keygen :)
Once managed to keygen RSA-1024 only because the developer was so kind and left the private key in plain text in the code.

What is it like to be a super-cracker on stage and still remain completely in the shadows in everyday life? Or maybe there was no everyday life, all life was only online? Did your family, relatives, friends know about your hobby?

Sick topic :( Success on stage is not something that you can entice girls with. None of my entourage knew what I was doing, no one could understand what the scene meant to me.

Can you explain why the nickname and group names are not disclosed? If it’s been a long time, why not open it up.

The habit of past years.

Are there many Russian groups?

I know about groups created by Russians and whose members are mostly Russians. They can be counted on the fingers. It seems that none of them are active at the moment.

Where did you get such great music for keygens ?!

To begin with, this is not “keygen music”, but tracker music. Music and graphics (no less remarkable) were made by friends from demo groups. For details, refer to the history of the demo scene.

Where did you study cracking, optimization and demoscene development? How was the functionality shared to the scenes? Did everyone know everything or was everyone responsible for a particular functionality? Were there any template parts of the code, or was each new scene developed in a new way, with new inspiration?

This is a question for demosceners :)

noob question. Who are the main suppliers of cracks / keygens now, if I may say so?

I do not understand who is meant by suppliers. The people who make them? They are still doing their job, both "then" and "now."

Why do you think the scene has stalled, and resources such as the cracker, are you quietly dying? (no new articles, discussions)

I didn’t really communicate on Russian resources. The last time I sat on the cracker was when he was on a free board and looked like a porn site. I suspect that the old people are slowly retiring, and there is no influx of fresh blood.

How do crackers relate mostly to the little ones? After all, the set of knowledge / skills is similar, only the application is different.

Mostly negative. A scene is just for fun, by definition, people who make money, and the little ones in particular, are not favored there. But the idea of ​​blocking a computer with a message like “you caught the virus while watching gay porn” is brilliant :)

Did you use the sites for team interaction (ex. Ctfers use rizzom or mopad, but there are no guarantees of anonymity there).

For the first time I see these words. IRC was enough.

What do you think about the future of MESH networks and, in particular, cjdns?

They have prospects.

Did a hobby help in finding a profession, or did you still have a hobby, but do you work (for example) as a chemistry teacher?

I work as a leading programmer, participating in the development of AAA games. A hobby, of course, helped.

Do you know what crackers familiar from those times are doing now? After all, many settled in virlabs ...

I lost almost all connections, so I can not say anything. By the way, I knew a lot of crackers whose work was in no way connected even with computers, not like programming :)

Are there any other hobbies like fishing / hunting?

There is.

What does your computer currently represent (Laptop / PC, OS, software, services)?

Dell Inspiron 17, Windows 8 / Ubuntu Linux 13.04, I use the services of Google, Mindjet, Evernote, Dropbox, Feedly.

Why did you leave the stage?

It’s hard to say ... on the one hand, time became less, more time was spent on real life, but in virtual I achieved everything I dreamed about. The feeling of the race has passed, and somehow interest began to decline. On the channel in efnet there were only old people who were talking about how it was good before. Sooner or later, everyone leaves.