If you visit The Pirate Bay Bittorrent mega-site and search for the word, “keygen,” you’ll be rewarded with many hits. The small keygen packages are often spread more widely and quickly than gigabyte-sized packages containing pre-cracked software. A few dozen kilobytes of code are ample for these simple tasks. All they need to do is prompt the user for the same registration data that the software does and then use the same algorithm that the software uses to generate a license key. Programs that generate illicit license keys are called “key generators” or “keygens” for short. What pirates often want is a license key that transforms a trial version into a full-featured version that never expires. Trial versions of programs are available from the developers’ sites. But why bother uploading hundreds of megabytes to various sites, or making such a large package available to downloaders, when a small file of a few thousand bytes will catch just as many fish? Sure, you could plant a virus or Trojan in a complete software package. One of the favorite traps set for pirates is the key generator. That’s why malware distributors love to target people who steal software, music, movies, games, and other intellectual property. “You can’t cheat an honest man” is an old proverb, and it has its complement: it’s pretty easy to cheat dishonest people.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |