Beware what your game installs on your PC!

[PauloMorfeo]

http://www.glop.org/starforce/

...
What is Starforce?

Starforce is a software copy protection tool installed by PC game publishers, which is designed to prevent the casual copying of retail CDROM applications. It installs as a hidden device driver, without the end-user's knowledge or consent.
...
Moreover, the Starforce drivers, installed on your system, grant ring 0 (system level) privileges to any code under the ring 3 (user level) privileges.
...
How can I get rid of Starforce?

There is a Starforce Cleaner Utility that has worked for some. As you can read on the page providing it as a download, "The famous protection solution developer, Starforce, has granted a sole right to distribute the Starforce Removal Tool utility to http://www.onlinesecurity-on.com.".
...

In there, you will find, also, a list of games installing that piece of crap.

[Zoombie]

Starforce raped my sister and killed my father.

And Makes X3 really slow.

[Kixxe]

Starforce raped my sister and killed my father.

And Makes X3 really slow.

And where did you steale that from?


Well that sucks. Glad i'm so broke that i can't buy any computer games. YAY!

[Zoombie]

I heard the quote from somewhere, but i cant remember where.

Also X3 is really hard to enjoy with that massive protection on it. IT reminds me of when Morrowind came out and i cracked it and suddenly it ran 4 to 5 times better.

Ah...those where the days.


Now WHERE IS OBLIVION!!!

[Fractal]

just to be clear....

http://www.star-force.com/protection/pr ... =91&id=319

The old version of StarForce drivers did indeed allow executing code using Administrator rights for its purposes. We would like to clarify some points. What we see here is that drivers may be accessed by any application. This application gets Administrator privileges and is not hampered by OS security as it would have been if being run with normal or low rights. This issue has happened before with some companies, and it was never a "critical" security matter (see http://computercops.biz/article2661.html for details).

It is well-known that the overwhelming majority of home users work under Administrator accounts all the time, thus this driver vulnerability does not affect them at all, as any application run will work with Administrator rights by default. This is significant only for business workstations working with common User rights. Going further we see that there are no complex StarForce protected games on business workstations, therefore this problem is valid only for office computers that have business applications protected with StarForce using the drivers (yet most of the time business applications are protected without drivers).

If you work in User-mode most of the time and wish to fix this vulnerability in StarForce drivers, you should do the following:

[DeathHawk]

I heard the quote from somewhere, but i cant remember where.

Also X3 is really hard to enjoy with that massive protection on it. IT reminds me of when Morrowind came out and i cracked it and suddenly it ran 4 to 5 times better.

Ah...those where the days.


Now WHERE IS OBLIVION!!!

Oblivion doesnt come out till Feburary sorry but you still got a while to wait.

On a site somewhere i read the realease date for Supcomm in on Dec, Sunday31 2006

[PauloMorfeo]

just to be clear....

http://www.star-force.com/protection/pr ... =91&id=319
...

Is that suposed to be shown in defence of StarForce? Cause, of what i see, that just adds more fuel to the flaming hate towards such piece of crap. Admiting it doesn't makes it better.

I shall never install such thing on my PC knowingly. And i mean, i wouldn't even install SupCom if it came with that.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Actually, as long as there is a way to bypass StarForce (even if it means unplugging disk drives and fiddling with windows), I will buy SupCom even if it comes with it. However, "buy" isn't realy the proper term, we russians rarely get to "buy" something, in the legitimate meaning of the word. If, however, it comes withOUT starforce, I will probably extirpate myself, but order it from an official site.

[FizWizz]

I looked at the list of games listed as using Starforce.... totally not down my alley. I downloaded the uninstaller anyways and ran it, and it told me Starforce wan't installed. hooray

[Caydr]

I think people in general should just stop installing crap from random companies. There are virtually no legitimate products advertized on banner ads. YOU CAN'T GET A FREE GODDAMN IPOD! Who ARE these idiots?! What runs through their heads?

"Oh, so I have to punch Saddam. And then I get a [ipod/laptop/car/fairy dust/promotion to level 18 scientologist]? Wow! What a deal! You'd think it would be harder, but I ALMOST got him that last time! Oh, here he comes again! I GOT HIM! I GOT HIM! I'M GOING TO GET A FREE [whatever]!!! I'LL BE FAMOUS!!! WILL I BE ON TV?? Why hasn't anyone else thought of this?"

Probably the same 0.0000000000000001% of the world that actually orders drugs online. Bloody morons. I hate people. I wish I could write a really good virus that makes their computer explode in their face. Scar them for life, preferably taking out one of their eyes. That would kick ass. Even to design a banner ad that says "SHOOT THE NINJA FOR A MILLION DOLLARS!!" and then have it come back with a message that says, "No, we were just lying. Like everyone else. You're a ****ing moron, please kill yourself.

Unless something is open-source, there's nothing worth having that's free. It's just that simple. There's no free laptops. There's no free viagra. There's no free animated curors. There's no free gayassed tacky emoticons (they should PAY YOU to use these).

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh. I know a few people who have clicked on the above sorts of things who are decent and/or hot, so maybe they shouldn't die. But only if I have a shot with them. The rest should die.

[Maelstrom]

BTW, we were actually talking about commercial games. That you puchase and install. Not click to get a free ninja ipod cross laptop hybrid.

[SinbadEV]

Heck, the whole Sony Spyware things is even worse...

[Maelstrom]

The whole what?

[AF]

A handful fo Sony music CD's have a rootkit installed on them that sues malware type code that viruses etc use to hide copyright protection software. It all installs silently wihtout the user knowing, and nobody really kenw about it till soemone found it, and then saw that his CD-Drive on his comp went bust tryign to uninstall it manually as there was no uninstaller.

The whole thign blew up from there, shady people even started using it, the people on world fo warcraft could cheat by adding a few characters tot he front of their cheat programs filename so that the automated cheat tools wouldnt find them, some worms used it too, currently thei'rs a c-action lawsuit against Sony BMG over this, also the sattes of California and Michigan have taken legal action against Sony. All affected CD's are being called back by Sony.

[Zenka]

and nobody really kenw about it till soemone found it,

Can't argue with that.

About bloated copy-protection, they really think all of this will help? Can anyone name a thing that is protected in such a way, you can't get it on any illegal way? (I can name one, it's called CD-keys, well for multi-player that is. ppl still buy HL1 for counter-strike, since the servers check your CD key.)

[AF]

CD's with the sony bmg stuff, the software will only let you copy it so many times and restricts what you can do with the cd.

There are more restrictive bits fo software out there, such as those that are so tough they wotn work on some computers fullstop.

[Caydr]

Don't make me laugh Alantai, that's easy to bypass. There is no copy protection in existence that hasn't been broken in under a day. No copy protection has ever prevented me from making an identical copy, whether you're talking about CDs, DVDs, games, etc. And I'm talking about legitimate backups, like the 3 TA disc sets I've got on a shelf "in case". No bloody way I'm going to risk damaging the original when I'm so daft with discs. I've got a backup of every music cd, DVD, and game in my collection. Some took all of a minute to find a way around the copy protection, and that was at most. Corporate morons...

I mean, in extreme circumstances where somehow someone has come up with a way to prevent me from duplicating a music CD using traditional methods, there is *nothing* that can possibly prevent me from dynamically recording my directsound output as I play a disc. And voila, perfect copy. iTunes and whatever other corporate yokels think they're so clever because of their "unbreakable" DRM protection. Hey, sorry, I just completely bypassed it without even thinking. Dumbasshats. (not that I use those services, they suck and they're apple)

There is nothing that can possibly prevent me from booting a handful of Slysoft apps which will not only bypass any DVD's copy protection, but will also remove irritating crap like trailers at the beginning of a movie. That's what actually got me started backup up my movies - not fear of damaging them, but the fact that when I sit down to watch a movie, no, I don't want to hear about the 50th anniversary of some gay corporation that's celebrating how great they are, I want to watch my bloody movie.

[AF]

I know, usually you just stick maskign tape around the edge and hey presto it works like a normal cd.

You could also manually score away at the suspect bits of the cd till theyf all off and you're elft with oen of those smaller CD's, or you could copy and halt the burn at the right moment.

You could also run it under a non-windows OS, record the content through a cd player and a microphone scoket, use custom software etc...

I never said nothing could crack them.......

[Sean Mirrsen]

The only seriously unbreakable copy protection is StarForce, and even that is slowly being pushed down the drain. Although you currently have to disable physical drives to play a starforce-protected game from a virtual copy, it's still a way to bypass it. In a sense, StarForce violates the users' right to make a backup copy of a game, which is actually a bad thing, and not only for the shifty pirate people.

[Maelstrom]

Has anyone cracked the HL/HL2 CD key protection registering thing yet? I bought it myself anyways, but im just curious to see if the Steam system has been broken.