Every once in a while someone writes a scary article telling us how the most frequent password still is "123456" and how very bad it is.
That's an utter load of crap.
I know a bit or two about computer security. Yet, my most commonly used password is "password". And that's not going to change anytime soon.
Last December I wrote a blog post explaining how some of the AU2 dance games were protected. Apparently, the protection author read the blog post and updated his protection. smile This blog post will explain how the protection was changed and suggest several ways of dealing with the new features.
This analysis covers:
This is a quite big update for Molebox VS unpacker. It fixes most of the bugs I'm aware of:
It's still not perfect and will fail in some situations - but I didn't want to postpone the release any longer. Please let me know if it crashes for you and I'll try to fix the problem. smile
Read More
Setting TMP folder to a RAM drive was a good idea in 1990s. Now it's year 2019 and you can't manage virtual memory better than Windows already do. But some people apparently still try, so I added checks to stop them from shooting themselves in the foot.
The fix was actually implemented a long time ago, I just didn't make the announcement.
Few days ago I started seeing ads on ebay. Weird.. confused I blocked the ad manually and forgot about it. The next time I visited ebay, the ad was showing again. I blocked it again. Third time.. Yes, you guessed right, the ad was back. So, I started to investigate why my filter rule was not working.
Few minutes later, the culprit was found:
This rule disables all cosmetic filters for eBay. But where does it come from?
I went to examine my filter lists. And then I went into full WTF mode:
Why the fuck I have "Acceptable Ads" list enabled?
Read More
I wrote about Moonton game protection in November 2018. It was a pretty boring protection, so I quickly forgot about that. In January 2019 Moonton devs decided to change their protection. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or not - but here's the update anyway.
This analysis covers:
specifically versions from 1.3.37 upto 1.3.47 (latest at the time of writing). All other games that I mentioned in my previous post haven't been updated, or are still using the old protection mechanism.
Recently there were few spammy comments posted on the blog. I mean real, actual comment spam:
I'm using a simple captcha and Akismet - it filters out pretty much all of the spam. So, these 2 comments getting through the filters really caught my attention.
Read More
Today's story is about dancing games. Specifically, about
These games employ some tricks in the APK file structure as well as modified libmono.so. I will go through each of the protection mechanisms step-by-step and explain how it works. In the end, you will have all the necessary information to implement your own decryption tool that can decrypt AU2 protected DLL files.
Final release in 2018 fixes a bug that was reported by dehola.
My last posts about Unity3D/Mono protections gained a lot of attention. Unfortunately, they gained the wrong kind of attention and low quality comments. So, I decided to make changes in a way these posts are made.
I have no agenda against game authors or any of the Android MOD teams. They just happen to use interesting protection mechanisms. And I like to take protections apart and describe HOW they work. So, the posts will be even more focused on HOW the protection works and how it can be defeated. Sometimes I'll make some code snippets available. But in any case, you will have to do your work to defeat the protection.
I made a big mistake releasing compiled executable. It attracts crowds of asian kids who are only able to drop DLL on the compiled executable and complain that it did not magically fix everything. They have absolutely no interest in how the protection actually works.
To fix that, there will be no more ready-made tools. If you care about the protection, my blog has all the information you need to make your own tool. But if you need a ready-made, compiled tool, go somewhere else.
Yes, I'm always interested in new and innovative protections. If you tell me about such protection, I will be very happy. When I get some free time, I will look at it. If it's interesting enough, I will write about it.
But I will not crack the protection for you. And most certainly I will not do it on your schedule. So, don't bug me about that.
My free time is limited. I will read all comments and all emails. Someday. When I have free time.
So, do NOT bump your comments or your emails. If you haven't received a reply, your message was stupid and I decided to ignore it. Or perhaps I just haven't had time to read it and respond to it.
I got plenty of comments like "how do I use your tool?" or "I can't open file in dnSpy. Help!!!111".
First, read the bloody posts, they explain how my tools work and what the limitations are. Second, use Google. Third, read "How to Report Bugs Effectively". I can't magically solve all your problems - I need to see the actual file first.
I hate using ban-hammer. So, first time you do something stupid, I will warn you. But if you continue doing that, I'll ban you. As simple as that.
Thank you for reading to the end, I really appreciate that. Please enjoy your stay here.
