StarForce 3 Beaten?

[news=http://img277.imageshack.us/img277/969/image16mb.gif]So has StarForce 3 finally been beaten?…or shall I say successfully copied?


So what exactly is StarForce 3? StarForce 3 is a CD / DVD copy protection system designed for developers and publishers who wish to protect their software and files distributed on CD-ROM/DVD-ROM discs against professional piracy, similar in the purpose of SafeDisc and SecuROM, but not at all similar in the way they work.

SafeDisc and SecuROM protected CDs/DVDs can be copied with the help of emulation and special copying software, But StarForce has proven great difficulty.

So what is it about StarForce that’s driving people crazy? Well it’s because it uses its own drivers, blocking virtual devices (Emulation software) and checking ATIP on CDROM. It's hard to copy (almost impossible) due to the physical information printed on original media. StarForce3 uses different checks (angular values). If these values are the same that Starforce3 checks, then the copy will run flawlessly, otherwise it won’t work. 90% of CD-R media when burned have these values shifted and StarForce3 recognises this and prevents the software from loading.

For months and months, long threads on forums were continuing to lengthen as people joined forces (no pun intended) to take this beast apart and exploit its weakness. But unlike other copy protections, Star Force 3 has always been one step ahead. Many exploits popped up in forums, for example running the disc over a network, but StarForce always stayed alert on these ‘break-throughs’ and simply patched their protection. It almost seemed impossible and people were starting to give up…

Until a warez scene group known as ‘MiRROR’ came along and started releasing StarForce 3 protected games. This unknown group (only 2 months old) claimed to have done what others couldn’t and this stunned everyone. But this didn’t fool the guys at club.cdfreaks.com who eventually realised that this method was nothing new and was in fact stolen from another site. I got a chance to ask one of the many knowledgeable members at cdfreaks about this method and this is what Niko76 had to;

“The warez group you're referring to is the Mirror Team. They use stolen a method founded on a Russian forum and explained in a certain way on CDFreaks forum. Some Russian guys have made a suite of tools for patching starforce3 images made with Alcohol with a correct DPM extraction file. This method works like a charm but it's hardware dependent. Each user must patch original image according to it’s own hardware. That tools change due to burner and media used. Perhaps, this trick works only for CD, as it needs raw/dao burning with subs. It won't work for DVD titles as it's impossible to write a DVD in raw mode.”

So it does look like StarForce can be copied, thanks to the Russians. But the members at Cdfreaks who have been battling StarForce for a considerable long time have also reached many goals. They have now come up with suggestions and guides for copying StarForce CDs and numerous members have confirmed to me that these guides do work and lots have people have posted their successful results.

Well lets just hope StarForce don’t release V4 anytime soon ;)

Written by FernandoSE and Niko76

Next month Deamon tool v4 will come out from the developers have said that it supports emulating starforce3 images .(so than also for normal users its easy to create an playable backup image from starforce3 game.) - Thanks to Cobra for adding this in.

:source: Source: www.filesplit.org[/news]

Even some music artist's are getting into the act because they think its unfair by posting fixes on their web sites .

Bleh. They don't need to even create Starforce 4, often they just fix the exploit, and increase the number from 3.023 (or some meaningless number) to 3.024.

this will be hapening untill starforce 3.00¥

It just makes me laugh all these SecuRom, laserloc rubbish!

The funniest one recently was StarForce 3.6.10.03 said to be protecting the yet to be released UFO Aftershock game
only for the protection to be thwarted before released LMAO