what is the process of cracking a software or game?

Question

nethwa · Answer

That's a bit difficult to explain - basically, the crackers try to avoid the verification-process. Previous this was pretty easy - you just had to find the lines of code, which verificate the user as a customer and cut them out (this was mainly made by checking for some files on the cd or using a simple cd-key). Today it's more complex, the crackers need to prevent the software from connecting to the servers of the company to verificate and to let it appear like the verification was successfull. There are many ways to do this - some just get the stream of the program and give a reply, some emulate the cd with ISO's (by using e.g. daemon tools). Thats it basically. Here is something that i found through google, maybe it explains you the process a bit better: http://allpclovers.blogspot.de/2010/01/download-useful-mozilla-firefox-add-ons.html

anonymous · Answer

While cracking shouldn't happen in my opinion (just pay for something you want to use. Others put in quite some effort to create it), if you're really interested have a look at http://www.crackmes.de It's a site with a number of programs specially created to be reversed-engineered. They offer programs at different difficulty levels and some also have a description on how to solve the problem.