A program to protect a disk from copying. Download - Programs for protecting disks from copying. Additional countermeasures

Instructions

One of the most common copy protection systems is the StarForce system. The creators of the system guaranteed absolute copy protection to game producers, but with the right approach, the disc can still be copied. Let's consider copying a protected disk using the Alcohol 120% program. This program can be easily found in and installed on your . Alcohol 120% will not only copy data from the disk, but will also transfer information about its physical structure to a special file, which is read by the emulator during the recording process, which in turn will emulate delays that simulate StarForce protection.

Insert the disc to be copied into the drive of your . Run the Image Creation Wizard in the Alcohol 120% program. Don’t forget to check the “enable emulator” option and select Starforce 1.x/2.x as the data type. Click "Next". To successfully copy, the program will first need to create a virtual image. Give the file to be created a name, select the *.mds format and indicate to the program the folder in which it will write the disk image. Disable all unnecessary active applications, set the drive read speed to minimum. The more carefully Alcohol 120% reads the source disk, the greater the chance that it will be able to cope with the protection. Depending on the power of the computer, after some time the creation of the virtual image will be completed, you can remove the disk from the drive.

You can deal with the recorded virtual image in different ways. The best solution the image will be linked to the virtual disk. The Alcohol 120% program, in fact, specializes in this. But you can try and burn it to a physical disk. When recording, Alcohol 120% reads the protection data from the information file and tries to completely recreate a physical copy of the disc you need. The writing speed, as with reading, should be selected to the minimum. After some time, your disk will be ready.

Sometimes there is a need to create copy-protected discs. For example, every second operator who films events (holidays, matinees, weddings) creates protected discs. But what to do if you recorded such a disc, but the original was overwritten on your computer? Most write-protected discs are designed in such a way that the information on the disc is read but not copied. Some programs that create disk images that support security systems can cope with this problem.

You will need

• Alcohol 120%

Instructions

One such program is the Alcohol 120% utility. This program will create a complete image on your hard drive. Alcohol supports most disk formats and allows you to work with 30 images simultaneously. This utility also allows you to copy discs that you recorded using protection.

Launch the Image Making Wizard. Select your burner - select data type - Starforce 1.x/2.x. Also pay attention to the item “Data Position Measurment”. Check this box. Click "Next".

Enter a name for the future image. Click on "Start" - select the reading speed of your disk. Set the speed to the minimum. It will take a lot of time, but the quality of the image will increase significantly. It is worth closing all open programs, because... they can take up system resources, which can have a negative impact on the future disk image. Next, click “Ok” and wait for this operation to complete.

After copying the image file is complete, check its functionality by mounting it on the virtual disk of the program itself.

Sources:

• How to remove the write protection of a disc, otherwise the protection interferes with recording

Every person has his own secrets. And the more computers penetrate people's lives, the more more secrets they trust the machine to store it. But saving private information on a personal computer is not at all safe. Even if user accounts are protected with passwords, even if a password is set in the BIOS, anyone with physical access to the computer can disconnect the hard drive and copy information from it. And when people realize this frightening fact, they involuntarily think about how to encrypt the disk and thereby reliably protect their data. Fortunately, there are now reliable free programs that provide the necessary functionality.

You will need

• Free program TrueCrypt data encryption, available for download at truecrypt.org.

Instructions

Begin the process of creating a new encrypted volume. Launch TrueCrypt. Select the menu items "Volumes" and "Create New Volume...". The TrueCrypt Volume Creation Wizard will open. On the wizard page, select "Encrypt a non-system partition/drive" and click the "Next" button. On the next page, select "Standard TrueCrypt volume", click the "Next" button. On the third page, click the "Select Device" button. In the "Select a Partition or Device" dialog that appears, select the disk that you want to encrypt, click "OK". Click the "Next" button. The next wizard will open. Select "Create encrypted volume and format it", click "Next". Next, specify the encryption algorithms and hashing in the drop-down lists of the current page, click the "Next" button. Click the Next button again. In the "Password" field, enter the password for the disk, in the "Confirm" field, confirm the entered password.

Format the disk. Move the mouse cursor randomly for a while within the current page of the Encrypted Volume Creation Wizard. This is necessary to generate random ones for encryption algorithms. From the drop-down lists, select the file system and volume cluster size. Click the "Format" button. In the warning dialog that appears, click the "Yes" button.

Wait for the formatting process to complete. This may take a long time if the disk partition being formatted is large enough. In the message dialogs that appear after formatting, click the "OK" button. Click the "Exit" button.

Mount the new encrypted volume. In the main program window, click the "Select Device..." button. In the dialog that appears, select the encrypted volume and click "OK". Select any drive letter from the list at the top of the application window. Click the "Mount" button at the bottom of the TrueCrypt window. A dialog will appear to enter the disk access password. Enter password. Will appear in the list of computer drives new disk, indicated by the previously selected letter.

Copy the files saved in the first step to the encrypted volume. Use the program file manager, or operating system functions.

Video on the topic

note

After formatting the disk with TrueCrypt, all information on it will be deleted. In addition, the disk will no longer be readable. Before encrypting a drive, make sure to save all important information from it.

Helpful advice

Use the ability to create TrueCrypt container files to store encrypted information. This is a more flexible approach than encrypting entire partitions. The container file can be moved to another computer and mounted there as a separate disk.

Sources:

• How to put a password on a hard drive without special programs

Sometimes situations arise when the operating system does not allow you to delete or move files on your own hard drive. Most often this occurs because you, as a user, do not have enough rights to delete certain files. You need to change your access rights and related permissions.

You will need

• - computer;
• - administrator rights.

Instructions

Find files in “My Computer” that you cannot perform operations on. For example, this is the Games folder. Right-click on the folder and select “Properties” from the drop-down menu. This can be absolutely any folder that is located on the local disk of a personal computer or. It is also worth considering the fact that some system files and folders may not be displayed, since the functions for viewing system data are disabled.

Go to the Security tab and find your name in the list of users. Left-click on it and check the list of permissions located just below. If the required checkboxes are not present, click the "Change" button. Check the boxes next to all the permissions you need. Click “Ok” and “Apply” to save your changes. Close all unnecessary windows to continue operations to remove protection from local drives.

Currently exists a large number of special data formats used to record information on a CD. These include not only the format for audio data (CD Digital Audio - CD-DA) and the format used to store arbitrary information in a format generally accepted for modern computer systems form (DATA CD), but also specific formats that allow you to create photo collections (Kodak CD, CD-G), store video information in a form accessible for playback (CD-I), save specific text information along with audio data (CD-TEXT) and others . The forerunner of all these formats is a regular audio disc. The development of other formats was associated solely with the enormous leap in technology that occurred shortly after the introduction of audio discs into mass production. Philips, as the developer of the basic standard for recording audio CDs, was forced to recognize the need to develop a fundamentally new approach to the problem of recording structured data on a CD. Moreover, due to the existence on the world market of a number of hardware platforms running on significantly different operating systems, an attempt was made to unify the format for recording data on a CD. This is how very exotic recording formats arose, in some cases necessary for writing games and multimedia based on game consoles (Amiga CD32, Atari Jaguar, Sony Playstation), in others - to expand the capabilities of the multimedia approach in computer and consumer technologies in principle (Video-CD , CD-I, CD-XA, CD-TEXT, CD-G). One important detail should be noted - all of these formats are adaptations of the basic format for recording audio CDs.

Thus, in a record-breakingly short period of time, a gigantic number of CDs have appeared on the market, carrying a variety of information, both in content and in actual cost. At the same time, the problem of illegal distribution of this kind of data arose.

Over the 15 years of development of the media and computer industry, there have been attempts to protect this kind of intellectual property, and they have been very successful. However, talking about the methods that were used at that time to implement protection as methods that could conceivably be used outside the factory simply does not make sense. The protection of disks in those years was based solely on manipulations with the coating of disks, which was basically impossible to do without having a press machine for replicating disks in a factory way.

But now the situation has changed. Not long ago, disc recording devices appeared on the market that allow for quite complex manipulations of both data and the physics of the recording process. And, what is especially important, these devices have become quite affordable in terms of price and do not require special equipment.

Let's look at methods for protecting information on a CD:

Method 1. Protecting information by disrupting some control overhead signals written to disk synchronously with the data.

Method 2. Protecting information by writing to a previously prepared medium, the surface of which contains a number of irreparable defects that do not interfere with reading, but fundamentally interfere with rewriting the disk.

Method 3. Information protection based on changing the file system used for recording. It should be said that, despite the fact that this method of protection is somewhat less universal, it also allows you to effectively protect data from the possibility of illegal copying of the entire disk, because A hybrid implementation of methods 1-3 is possible.

Let's take a closer look at each of the listed methods.

Method 1.

When recording absolutely all types of data onto a CD, a number of control digital signals are generated and recorded synchronously with the data blocks. In the vast majority of cases, such recording is done in hardware and means that the device, using an internal generator, generates control sequences without the direct participation of a copier program and places them at the end of each data block. Such sequences are usually called subchannels. There are only eight subchannels and they are usually numbered lowercase in English letters P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W.

CDs recorded in the CD-DA standard use only two subchannels - the P-subchannel, which is essentially a strobe channel when transmitting data from the initiator to the device, and the Q-subchannel, in which information about the time code and device status was recorded , codes of a hardware error corrector operating according to the Solomon-Reed scheme, as well as some others. For further use, 6 more subchannels were reserved - R-W, which are recorded on the CD, but are not actually used. During the development of the CD-DA format into other formats, only a few successful attempts were made using R-W subchannels. For example, in the R subchannel, when recording a disc in CD-G and CD-TEXT formats, some user information about copyright and authorship is recorded for each track. In rare cases, information from R-W subchannels is used by test programs to evaluate the performance of a particular disk reader/writer. In practice, today an ordinary CD containing information of any type contains 75% of unused subchannels.

This situation allows you to protect the CD in a special way. In the process of recording subchannels, completely filled blocks are formed separately from data, and such recording does not violate any agreements or standards for recording data on a CD, but complements it. The unused subchannel area records additional control information that is implicitly associated with the P and Q subchannel data. Software for writing similarly protected discs uses the Q subchannel data to form the W subchannel. The data that will be written to the W-subchannel is essentially the corresponding control data encoded by a symmetric algorithm. The primary key for encoding is formed on the basis of data recorded in service areas on the CD. In parallel, an additional pseudo-gating R-subchannel is introduced. The essence of introducing the latter is that part of the data written to the disk is placed in an area with the correct Q-subchannel, but with an incorrect main strobe. When reading a CD written in this way, this data will simply be ignored without causing an error message. However, when using a program that is capable of correctly reading such disks, before deciding how effective the information being read is, a disjunction of the real and pseudo-gating channels will be made, which will ensure correct and complete reading of the data in its entirety.

The meaning of introducing a coded W-subchannel is as follows. Most programs when copying disk-to-disk do not read the subchannel area directly, but use built-in generators or rely on the capabilities of the device itself. If you try to rewrite a disc using similar W and R algorithms, the subchannels will be lost. A program that has been illegally copied, before launching or during its installation, will check the ultrastructure of the subchannels of the media from which it was launched, and if decoding the subchannel with a programmatically obtained key does not give a control result, it will simply not start.

This protection option is even more effective when used together with method 2.

Method 2.

The data must be written to a disk containing “bad” readable areas. Such areas should not interfere with the reading of data by any of the methods accepted for this format. Attempts to read these areas when ripping a CD should fail and abort the ripping process.

Exists whole line devices for recording CDs that support commands for controlling laser power and drive shaft rotation speed. These include Plextor, Matsashita, Plasmon and some Teac models. Creating a bad area on a disk comes down to the procedure of chaotically varying these parameters during the recording process using the SCSI commands Optical Power Calibration and Set Shaft Spd. A necessary and sufficient condition for subsequent successful reading of data recorded in this way is accurate monitoring of faulty zones at the time of recording. This means that the recording program varies the laser parameters before recording, after which, when it reaches normal conditions writes to the disk surface at a given location, writes effective data. Moreover, the Q-subchannel data, which is responsible for positioning the next non-failure sector, is generated within the writing program, and not by the device itself, and is recorded separately.

Thus, using this algorithm, we can obtain a protected disk with almost any data.

The disadvantage of this method is a noticeable reduction in the total amount of data that can be written when the level of disk protection is increased. However, the advantage of the method is that no copy device can make a copy of such a disc in TAO (Track-at-Once), SAO (Session-at-Once) and RAW modes. Of course, the user can illegally copy data without duplicating the disk structure, but an easily implemented software check of the media from which the program is launched will not make it possible to run the program from something other than the original CD.

Method 3.

Recording data on any medium is always done in a structured manner. The method of constructing basic structures for organizing information on media is usually called a file system. This method determines parameters such as the size of the read/write aperture (sometimes erroneously called sector length), how directory entries and allocation tables are generated, timing data, and checksum codes.

Data is written to a CD using a file system CDFS(Compact Disc File System). In this case, a data allocation table is formed in the service area, containing vectors of the beginning of the data (tracks or files) and length.

The essence of this protection method boils down to the use of a non-standard file system with an absolutely standard entry to the allocation table. When writing a set of data to disk, the writing program generates a table and writes it to the appropriate part of the service area. In this case, the entry about the data size remains equal to zero, and the first vector given indicates the area in which, in the standard CDFS-format contains a block of data corresponding to a specific loader program. The actual data is written after this block in the format of a protected file system.

When you try to copy such a disk, a standard reading program will determine that the disk is full, but the total length of all files is close to zero. And it will not be able to copy in any mode other than RAW mode. On the other hand, when launched from such a disk, the bootloader program, which will start working automatically, will correctly read data from areas with a non-standard file system, after which the application recorded on the disk will start. This method can be used together with methods 1 and 2, which further increases the reliability of protection.

The described methods allow you to protect against copy attempts using the TAO, SAO and RAW modes. However, it should be remembered that there is also a method of making a copy from the original matrix of a CD in the factory, when a complete and accurate physical copy is made on a press machine, and then replicated in the volumes required by pirates. But this is more of a problem to be solved general issues ensuring safety at the manufacturing company. Therefore, we believe that the methods we have developed should significantly reduce the possibility of illegal copying and replication of data from a CD.

Comparison of various protections.

This table will allow you to visually not only obtain the main parameters of all protective systems, but also analyze their properties. Strong defense you can call one that is not opened at all (not yet opened). A promising one can be considered one that has been opened, but opened in one way. Such protection has the potential to become difficult to break if its developers are able to strengthen one or another weak block. And we will consider weak the protection that is hacked by all three known methods, which indicates an extremely low protective function.

Name of protection	Manufacturer\country	Method of protection	The need for special equipment for protection	Protection of small batches on CD-R\RW	Hacking methods
Cd-Cops	Link Data Security		NO	NO	There are several "cracks"*
LaserLock	MLS LaserLock International		YES	NO	Emulation**, bitwise copying***, "crack"
StarForce	ProtectionTechnology (Russia)	Analysis of physical characteristics of CD. Without setting marks	NO	YES	The protection has not yet been opened****
SafeDisk	Macrovision Corporation	Applying non-copyable marks	YES	NO
SecuRom	Sony	Applying non-copyable marks	YES	NO	Emulation, bit copying, crack
TAGES	Thomson & MPO	Analysis of physical characteristics of CD. Without setting marks	NO	NO	Emulation, "crack"

*The term “crack” here refers to an external program that can disavow protection. With this method, changes are made to the code of the protected program.

**This type of program emulates laser marks. With this approach, no changes are made to the code of the program being opened.

***The most common copying method, the meaning of which is to use special bit-by-bit copiers, like CloneCD. This type of protection can work either on its own or together with a “crack”.

****in fairness, it is worth noting that there is a precedent for an opening, but it became possible only due to the fact that pirates gained access to the unprotected application code, after which a crack was made.

A short guide to hacking methods and ways to protect against them

(1) Hacking by copying and emulation

Bit copy

The essence of the attack is that a user (not always an attacker) tries to copy a disk he has in order to create a copy (for personal use or for circulation).

To carry out such an attack, various programs can be used, often included with CD-R/RW devices. This is both the official Easy CD Creator and the semi-official (semi-hacker) CloneCD and BlindRead:

The protection must be able to counteract this type of hacking, since hacking usually begins with this, since there are a great many copiers capable of copying disks with primitive protection.

Defense methods: There are two ways to counteract hacking. The first is that a certain mark is written to the disk, which is not copied by conventional means (for example, an unstable segment is created that is not readable by the media, and since it is not readable, it cannot be copied either). Unfortunately, this method is not always stable, since there are already “advanced” copying programs (the same CloneCD and BlindRead) that are able to skip such places (replace unstable areas with arbitrary data) and carry out copying to the end. The second method is based on the fact that you don’t need to write anything down anywhere, you just need to remember it in a certain way physical characteristics disks that simply cannot be reproduced by any copying; more precisely, the disk itself is copied, but with a different physical structure. Accordingly, the user can easily clone disks, but the key one will be the one that was officially purchased.

Emulation

This approach allows you to create virtual device drivers and simulate disk access. It's already clean water hacking, since for the normal operation of the opened application, a special driver is installed in the system, which simulates an access to a non-copyable label on the disk and returns to the opened program exactly the data that it expects to “see”. Similar method quite often used at first, when a hacker knows a way to obtain a non-copyable label on a disk, but he does not really want to deal with the program using the disassembly method.

A countermeasure can be working with recording/reading devices at a low level, when it is impossible to intercept calls to the equipment. One more clarification needs to be made here: in order for a protected application to access a CD and check it for the presence of a non-copyable label, it is necessary to use one of the read/write functions that Windows itself provides. Hackers have already developed a number of mechanisms that allow them to intercept standard calls to Windows functions, and since it is possible to intercept a message, it means that they can completely imitate the reading, completely replacing standard calls with their own. As mentioned above, counteraction this method hacking can only be done by accessing the drive not through standard calls.

(2) Hacking the software module

This is the next level of hacking. If it was not possible to copy the application, and the method of protecting it is also unknown, then the hacker moves to the next level of hacking - to study the logic of the program itself, in order to, after analyzing the entire application code, isolate the protection block and deactivate it.

Hacking of programs is carried out in two main ways. This is debugging and disassembling.

Debugging is special mode, created by a special application - a debugger, which allows you to execute any application step by step, transferring the entire environment to it and making everything as if the application works only with the system, and the debugger itself is invisible. Debugging mechanisms are used by everyone, not just hackers, since this is the only way for a developer to find out why his brainchild is not working correctly. Naturally, any good idea can be used for evil. This is what hackers use when analyzing application code in search of a security module.

This is the so-called step-by-step execution mode, or, in other words, interactive. And there is also a second one - disassembly - this is a method of converting executable modules into a programming language understandable to humans - Assembler. In this case, the hacker gets a printout of what the application is doing. True, the printout can be very, very long, but no one said that it was easy to remove the protection.

Hackers actively use both hacking mechanisms, since sometimes the application is easier to go through the steps, and sometimes it is easier to get the listing and analyze it.

Let's now look at the main methods of hacking and countering it

Debuggers

There are a great variety of debuggers: from debuggers that are part of the development environment, to third-party emulating debuggers that completely “immerse” the application being debugged in the analytical environment, giving the developer (or hacker) complete statistics about what and how the application is doing. On the other hand, such a debugger imitates the environment so clearly that the application, executing under it, believes that it is working directly with the system (a typical example of such a debugger is SoftIce).

Opposition

There are a great many ways to counteract it. These are precisely the methods of counteraction, since their main task is to make the debugger’s work either completely impossible or as labor-intensive as possible. Let us describe the main methods of counteraction:

Littering program code. A method in which special functions and calls are introduced into the program that perform complex actions, access drives, but in fact do nothing. Typical method of deception. The hacker needs to be distracted by creating a branch that will attract attention with complex calls and contain complex and large calculations. The hacker will sooner or later realize that he is being deceived, but time will be lost.

Using multithreading. Same effective method protection that uses Windows capabilities for parallel execution of functions. Any application can proceed linearly, that is, instruction by instruction, and can be easily read by a debugger, or it can be divided into several threads executed simultaneously. Naturally, in this case, there is no talk about the linearity of the code, and since there is no linearity, analysis here is difficult to implement . As a rule, creating 5-6 or more threads makes life much more difficult for a hacker. And if the streams are also encrypted, then the hacker will be stuck for a long time trying to open the application.

Suppressing operating environment changes- the program itself reconfigures the environment several times, or generally refuses to work in the changed environment. Not all debuggers are capable of 100% simulating the system environment, and if the “experimental” application changes the environment settings, then sooner or later the “wrong” debugger may fail

Resistance to setting control points. A special mechanism, supported by a microprocessor, with the help of which it is possible to examine not the entire program, starting from the beginning, but, for example, only starting from the middle. To do this, a special call is placed in the middle of the program (call point - BreakPoint), which transfers control to the debugger. The disadvantage of this method lies in the fact that in order to implement an interruption, a change must be made to the code of the application under study. And if the application checks itself from time to time for the presence of checkpoints, then doing this will be very, very difficult.

Changes to certain processor registers, to which debuggers respond inadequately. Just like with the environment. The debugger is also a program and also uses operating system and a processor, which is the same for everyone. So, if you change certain microprocessor registers that the debugger cannot emulate, you can significantly “undermine” its health.

Disassemblers and dumpers

It was said above about the disassembler, but about the dumper you can add that it is practically the same disassembler, only it does not translate the file located on the disk into assembly code, but the contents of RAM at the moment when the application began to execute normally (that is , passed all protections). This is one of the insidious means of hacking, in which the hacker does not have to fight with mechanisms that counteract debugging, he just waits for the application to complete all checks for the legality of launching, checking the labels on the disk, and begins normal operation. At this moment, the dumper removes “clean” code without impurities. To everyone's joy, not all defenses can simply reveal themselves! And more about this below:

Encryption. The simplest and most effective way to counteract. Implies that a certain piece of code never appears in free form. The code is decrypted only before control is transferred to it. That is, the entire program or part of it is encrypted and is decrypted only before it is executed. Accordingly, in order to analyze its code you need to use a debugger, and its work can be very, very complicated (see above)!

Encryption and decryption (dynamic code change). A more advanced encryption method that not only decrypts part of the code when executed, but also encrypts it back once it has been executed. With such protection, the hacker will have to spend all the time with the debugger, and breaking the protection will take a very, very long time.

Using virtual machines. Another encryption upgrade. The method is not just to encrypt and decrypt entire fragments of code, but to do it command by command, similar to how a debugger or a virtual machine works: take the code, convert it into machine code and pass it on for execution, and so on until the entire module is executed . This method is much more effective than the previous ones, since the application’s functions are never open to a hacker. Naturally, it is difficult to implement, but by implementing it, you can protect yourself from the attacks of any hackers. But this method has a drawback - performance, because such translation takes a lot of time, and, accordingly, the method is good for protecting only critical sections of the code.

Additional countermeasures

It's already here pure description any possibility of counteraction. General introductions are given, because protection can be effective only when each of its modules is written conscientiously using various tricks. That is, all the recipes mentioned above must be present in one form or another in any system.

Use Windows system resources to store protection data: additional memory allocated for window settings and local thread storage. The essence of the method is the non-standard use of standard areas, say, to store keys, passwords, etc., not at all where they will be looked for in the first place during hacking.

Use comparison operations in non-standard ways to avoid their explicit presence. By comparison, there are certain microprocessor instructions that both developers and hackers know about. And if you try to use non-standard types of comparison, you can slightly confuse a hacker who is expecting a standard answer.

Avoid accessing variables that are directly related to protection. That is, use any indirect methods of access to special areas.

Use the method of “mirroring” events, that is, apply non-standard actions to standard calls. This was discussed above.

Use reliable, time-tested algorithms, etc. for encryption.

Only the main approaches are listed here, not even the main ones, but the well-known ones. And we will learn about the original developments later, as soon as hackers are able to crack the next unique protection.

Key2Audio audio CD copy protection, which has recently been introduced by a number of record companies, can be hacked using an ordinary marker pen.

This was discovered by some anonymous researchers who disseminated information about their discovery on the Internet, reports Reuters.

Key2Audio technology, developed by Sony, consists of recording an additional track with incorrect digital data onto a CD containing music tracks. This track is usually located on the outer circle of the disc. Personal computers are designed in such a way that they first read information tracks. Since the data on the protection track is erroneous, the computer will unsuccessfully try to read it and will not be able to play music recorded on the same disc.

This limitation applies to both PC and Macintosh computers (some machines on this platform freeze when using such discs), as well as some models of portable and car players. Ordinary home audio devices play such discs without problems.

Bypassing this protection turned out to be quite simple: if the “false track” is painted over with a regular marker, then the rest of the contents of the protected disk can easily be read by a computer and, therefore, copied to a hard drive or other storage medium

Based on articles:
Pavel Tkachev, Alexander Sinitsky, Pavel Khlyzov, Vladimir Gorchakov, Sergei Karlovsky
UDC 638.235.231 "USE OF HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE TO PROTECT INFORMATION ON A CD FROM ILLEGAL COPYING AND REPRODUCTION"

Novichkov Alexander
Analysis of the market for protective equipment software from unauthorized copying.

Many users store their information on hard drives without thinking about backing up the data. It is very important to periodically create an archive with backup data on CD or DVD media. Thus, you ensure the safety of data in the event of a computer or laptop failure. When storing your data on a disk, it is also important to ensure its security. Suppose you need to transport confidential information safely and securely. This is where you can use the method CD/DVD encryption And disk password protection. In case of theft or loss, you will be sure that your personal information (documents, personal photos, music or videos) will remain inaccessible.
Rohos Disk Encryption is a convenient and suitable utility for encrypting CD/DVDs. You will need an empty disk, the Rohos Disk program installed on your computer, as well as any CD burning application (for example: Nero, Roxio Creator, Express Burn, Windows 7 CD\DVD disc burning option).

Advantages of an encrypted CD:

• secure transportation of confidential information;
• safe storage backup copies with data;
• storing important data in a secret place;
• password access.

How to create a password-protected and encrypted CD\DVD disk:

Windows 7 comes with a built-in CD burning feature by default. You can use it if you do not have a special application for burning CD/DVD discs installed.

Burn a CD.

Access to the encrypted virtual disk located in the rdisk0.rdi container is carried out through Rohos Disk Browser.

5. Burn a CD.

How to open an encrypted CD.

Insert the disc. Open it and run the rbrowser.exe utility.

Rohos Mini Drive Portable will automatically indicate the path to the hidden container (rdisk0.rdi). If you have written multiple encrypted virtual disks, select the one you want to use.
Enter the password to gain access to the drives. Use the virtual keyboard to protect against keyloggers (“***”).

After Rohos Disk Browser will open the encrypted disk explorer with documents and files.

What you need to know.

- Data encrypted on a CD is read-only. They cannot be edited.

— After you inserted the CD, you can see the *.rdi file and Rohos Disk Browser in Explorer. Access to your disk is password protected, information is hidden and securely protected.

— In order to open an encrypted CD as a virtual disk to which a letter is assigned, use the Rohos Disk program (option: Connect more...).

In the century information technologies The development of methods for storing and protecting information is becoming a particularly relevant topic of research for scientific teams and individual enthusiasts. Not only software products require protection, but also works of art, recorded and stored on disks, personal information of citizens.

How to protect a disk from copying? There are programs to protect disks with information from copying. For example, CD-Protect, which creates special bad areas on the disk that are recognized by the protection system. According to them, the disks are divided into friend or foe. Copying a protected disk to a hard drive will cause the system to crash. This is one of the programs that really protects disks.

SafeDisc v3 encrypts the main program module using a specific key. Apply to the disc digital signature, corresponding to this key, ranging in size from 3 to 20 megabytes. The authenticity of the protected disk is recognized in 10-20 seconds, and you can then work with it. To remove protection from such a disk, you need to change the encrypted module.

LaserLock encrypts files and laser marks the disk using additional hardware. In theory, it is impossible to copy a protected disk. In fact, several ways have been found to bypass this program.

Several copying techniques

If there are problems of protecting a disk from copying, then methods have already been invented to solve the exact opposite. Protected disks are successfully copied, using the information for their own purposes.

One of the most common programs that allows you to copy protected DVDs is Alcohol 120%, which is a CD/DVD emulator. The program creates an image of a protected disk on your computer's hard drive with all the information that other programs can access. The image is taken as a normal disk located in the drive. The program can work simultaneously with 31 images and allows you to copy disks protected with SafeDisc, LaserLock, Securom.

Another program for copying protected disks is Blindwrite. With its help, you can create identical copies of CD/DVD discs, remove information from protected discs of various formats, even if there is mechanical damage (scratched and worn). The developers regularly update this program.

Experts in the field of programming and information technology come to the conclusion that there is no absolutely reliable way to protect disks from copying. After all, the more carefully a protection method is developed, the more difficult it is to come up with programs for reading and copying protected disks.

Introduction

The problem of protecting information distributed on optical discs appeared almost simultaneously with the advent of CD (and now DVD) discs themselves. We will not describe in detail what these problems are, because they are already on everyone’s lips: this is the illegal distribution of software, music, databases and other intellectual property. Since legal barriers do not stop attackers, numerous software methods for protecting information have now been developed and are widely used. However, most of them are hackable in one way or another, and soon almost any product, even equipped with the most advanced security measures, ends up on the pirate market.

Secure CD-RX CDs

Recently on Russian market an innovative product has appeared that uses a completely new approach to information protection. Media-R-Us, a company specializing in the supply of equipment for duplicating CDs and DVDs, introduced CD-RX discs - discs with built-in copy protection. The uniqueness of the proposed method of protecting information is that protection is provided directly by the medium, i.e. CD-RX disc.

As the advertising slogan for CD-RX discs states, in order to protect your data, “just burn your data to disk” and it will be reliably protected from illegal copying. It's that simple and easy. You can write information to a CD-RX disc, you can read it directly from the disc, but you cannot copy it!

Externally, CD-RX is practically no different from regular disks. However, if you look closely at the recording surface, you can see small area data about 5-6 mm wide around the inner circumference of the disk.

On the cd-rx website it is written that this is “VDH - Virtual Digital Hologram (virtual digital hologram)”, in fact, the very essence of CD-RX disk protection. During recording, the recorded data is encrypted and interleaved using the disc's unique VDH, so only the owner of the original disc can read the data.

Data recording and protection process

To set the necessary protection parameters for a CD-RX disk, you must use special software - AutoLock Wizard. It takes less than a minute to install. The program has a step-by-step interface, which allows you to quickly navigate all its functions. The user needs to select the types of files that need to be protected, specify the path to the files on the hard drive, and also make protection settings.

The disc can be written in such a way that only certain types of files are protected, while others are open.

You can prevent printing and/or copying to the clipboard. You can allow disc content to be opened only for certain software. Finally, you can even assign a password to access the disk as a whole, without knowing which it will be impossible to open any files on it at all. In general, it offers quite flexible settings for what your protected disk will be like.

Next, the usual recording parameters are determined (disc name, number of copies, recording speed, etc.), familiar to any user. After this, you can start directly burning a CD-RX disc. This is where the fun begins. During recording, the data is encrypted using the keys contained in the VDH and is written to disk in this form. In other words, during recording, the file data is merged with the VDH data, thus linking them directly to the disk.

It is worth noting that the process of encrypting files, depending on their number, takes some time, from a few seconds to 1-2 minutes.

Testing

So, our disc is recorded. Now let's try working with a protected disk. CD-RX discs should work on any drive and any PC, and no additional software installation is required. For the purity of the experiment, we install it in the reading drive of another computer and open it with a conductor. Since we have installed password protection on the disk, a window appears asking you to enter a password.

Let's try to bypass this protection, click Cancel and look at the contents of the disk. All folders and files recorded on the disk are visible to us. Let's try to open the files. Unfortunately, this fails - error messages are displayed everywhere. Audio and video files do not play, HTML files display a meaningless set of characters.

Indeed, without knowing the password, it is impossible to view the recorded files on the disk. Let's run the disk again and this time enter the password. Now all files can be opened and viewed normally.

It is worth noting that it is not at all necessary to put password protection on the disk, because the files will be protected in any case, but for maximum protection it will not hurt.

Unsuccessful copy attempts

Let's try to copy files from the disk - the files are copied. But viewing them from the hard drive again leads to similar errors, so the data can only be read from the original CD-RX disc.

At the root of the disk there are autorun files, as well as a file called Start_here.exe (however, it could be renamed during the recording process). This is the program responsible for “decrypting” the disk. The decryption program launches instantly and disappears into the tray, without in any way affecting the overall operation of the system. When you remove a CD-RX disc from the drive, the decryptor immediately stops working, and all windows of open protected files are automatically closed.

In addition to copying files from the disk, we also tried one-to-one copying of the disk, taking an image from the disk and then burning it, and even bit-by-bit copying using several specialized programs, but none of the above methods led to positive results. The copied discs turned out to be completely unreadable.

Finally, we try to copy a CD-RX disc on a professional CD duplicator costing $8,000. Alas, none of the received copies of the CD-RX disc were read. The defense turned out to be “too tough” even for such a professional apparatus.

conclusions

Let's summarize our testing. Indeed, as stated, CD-RX discs allow you to reliably protect files. Thanks to VDH technology, any copying of files from a CD-RX disc is impossible using any of the existing methods.

Among the disadvantages of CD-RX, it is worth noting the lack of support for some file types, however, software developers are constantly adding new formats to the list of supported files. The disadvantages include the slightly “reduced” disk volume - 670 MB (the remaining 30 MB is occupied by VDH data, but these are features of the technology). It should also be said about the relative high cost of the technology; each CD-RX disc costs from 45 to 95 rubles (depending on quantity and design). Relative because the safety of information cannot be cheap. They even offer “armored” CD-RXs for 145 rubles, with a special AntiScratch coating that prevents scratches. These discs have a certified shelf life of 100 years.

There are many more advantages. Surely each of us has at times faced the need to write data to a disk, but in such a way that it could not be copied or read without knowing the password. Now CD-RX discs can easily solve this problem. Burn your photos, music, documents to CD-RX and be sure that no one can copy them.

The use of CD-RX drives in organizations at various levels will help improve security. The introduction of CD-RX disks will help avoid the theft of various databases, financial and internal company documents, as well as other information of commercial value.

But the biggest beneficiaries of CD-RX will be software developers and publishers. Since CD-RX discs allow you to protect EXE files, publishing software distributions on CD-RX seems to be the most optimal solution to the problem of pirated software distribution.

CD-RX developers have not yet said anything about the possible appearance of rewritable discs with copy protection. Also, nothing is known about the possibility of creating DVD-RX discs. However, we should not rush things, because the technology is new and perhaps soon we will see other disk formats that have built-in copy protection.

You can learn more about CD-RX discs on the website: www.cd-rx.ru.

We thank Media-R-Us for providing CD-RX discs for testing.

Mikhail Degtyarev (aka LIKE OFF)
29/06.2006