DRM’s ever present weakness, if you can view it you will be able to crack it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole
The analog hole (also known as the analog loophole or analog gap) is a perceived fundamental and inevitable vulnerability in copy protection schemes for noninteractive works in digital formats which can be exploited to duplicate copy-protected works using analog means. Once digital information is converted to a human-perceptible (analog) form, it is a relatively simple matter to digitally recapture that analog reproduction in an unrestricted form, thereby fundamentally circumventing any and all restrictions placed on copyrighted digitally distributed work. Media publishers who use digital rights management (DRM), to restrict how a work can be used, perceive the necessity to make it visible or audible as a “hole” in the control that DRM otherwise affords them.[1]
EDIT: I don’t know if I’d say that it’s fundamental, as Wikipedia did — I can think of a couple of approaches to try and address it — but it is quite substantial.
it is fundamental because you can capture it at the viewing end every time, until we get cyborg eyes anyway
Please drink verification can
I feel like a lot of what he attributes to malice or obfuscation is rather his unfamiliarity with the technical side of things.
Mapping numbers to non-sequential glyphs is exactly what happens in PDF, and PostScript before it. So is text positioning by Cartesian coordinates rather than in reading order.
Ligatures and multiple font variations have been around since fonts existed. Fonts that render incorrectly unless you use them in one specific way are legion (turns out font designers often have very little technical understanding, or just don’t care).
The only thing that sounds like obfuscation to me is changing the font encoding on every call. And if that is indeed its purpose, it’s a very poor attempt.
What is evil is that this type of cracking is probably illegal through contract law (simply using the product).
The level of pettiness by this person is immense, & I love it! We need more people like this in the world. Great short read. They obviously have some real skills & patience to pull this off, amazing!
kudos on having the fortitude to go through all that, but coulda just gone to anna’s archive or zlib and downloaded it in like 5 seconds
