The reason why the Steam CEG can cracked in a very short time

[kevinyang]

First, thank you very much for replying my e-mail. Speaking of games which are encrypted via the Steam CEG mechanism, in my opinion, since this technology has a certain number of flaws, games using this technology can be cracked in a very short period, such as 1 hour or so. Thus, I really hope developers can address this issue and strengthen the CEG authentication mechanism.

In terms of the CEG authentication, there are only 2 approaches involved. One is the File Authentication, and the other one is the Registry Authentication.

For the Registry Authentication, it can be compromised by simply modifying the registry file.

And for the File Authentication part, using HOOK APIs, such as the GetFileInformationByHandle to conduct the emulation can easily render this method feeble.

Thus, I strongly suggest to add some functions related to the hardware ID in the CEG authentication mechanism, such as CUPID. These kinds of APIs can not be hooked, hence all methods base on the HOOK mechanism should be of no use.

Everytime I bought a legitimate copy of a game, the pirate version of it would be available in 1 hour or so. This really makes me upset. Encryption methods used by STEAM ought to be various. I hope your company can pay more attention to this scenario, and let us legitimate users enjoy games much earlier, as well as much longer than those pirate users.

Thank you very much!

Sincerely,

[♛ cake]

=)

[Marble]

DRM is futile. Any attempt to strengthen it is just wasted effort. Any additional hoops to jump through hurts the legitimate customers even more.

[Tito Shivan]

Steam does a better job of countering piracy with their pricing strategy than by locking down the games.

And at the end of the day, the tighter the DRM, the more burdensome it becomes to the real customer.

[Satoru]

CPUID and HWID linking are bad because of issues with changing your hardware, using new laptops/computers, cybercafe licenees etc.

Functionally CEG is mostly to avoid 'pre-day0' leakage. That's it. Doing so really removed one of the most prevelant reasons for piracy, pre-access. Game sales remove the other reason, price. Publishers these days also release games pretty much simultaneously world wide or very close to the same (3-4 days separation fro europe friday vs usa tuesay releases) Thus even the "I have to wait 1 month for a game" is mostly moot (except for Japan).

If you're pirating games thesea days it's because you want to steal and you don't have morals. Because all the other 'excuses' no longer are relevant.