MKS Toolkit Release 5.2
150 identical protection schemes
by Drlan
(18 September 1997, slightly edited by fravia+)
Courtesy of Fravia's page of reverse engineering
Well, an interesting essay, Drlan seems to specialize on nice
little "tools of the trade". Here we have an interesting case: 150 little unix
programs (VERY USEFUL) ported to Win95... every single one of them with the same
stupid protection! And, as you'll read at the bottom, a request for help
from the "old hands" (specifically +gthorne, as it seems :-)
Target Program: MKS Toolkit Release 5.2
Protection: Nag(s), 30 day time limit
Cracked by: drlan [Me'97/C4N]!
Location: http://www.mks.com
Tools needed:
- SoftICE 3.01 for Windows 95
- W32Dasm 8.9 (any version will do)
- Hex Editor (I like PSEdit and Hex Workshop)
Conventions used:
> denotes a SoftICE command
While you may not consider it exactly a "tool of our trade," this target
contains a set of UNIX-like utilities that you just may find useful. The
MKS Toolkit is a set of UNIX-like programs that run on top of Windows 95
or Windows NT. I think you may find some useful tools in this babe, like
many of your favorite UNIX utilities (awk, grep, vi, sh, etc.). Granted,
no program can transform Windows into UNIX, but this does give you many
of the little command line utilities and a SHell with the look and feel.
Download the target and run it a few times to get a feel for what's going on.
You'll notice a nice little reminder that the program will expire in 30 days.
That doesn't sound like quite enough time for a thorough evaluation, so let's
get to work...
Take a look at the directory where the demo was installed. You'll find lots
of little programs (about 150 of them, sh.exe, vi.exe, grep.exe, etc.). Let's
use grep.exe as our target. Go ahead and run grep. There's our friendly nag.
Interestingly, grep.exe ran in the background and the nag came up as a new
foreground window. Click the CLOSE button on the nag screen and your back to a
screen displaying the syntax for grep. Ok, now set your date way ahead to see
what happens when we're passed the point of no return. You'll get a message
box telling you "The MKS Toolkit demo has expired." Bummer. Set your date to
the correct date and the program still (and the nag) still runs. So, it does
not leave behind anything indicating that it already expired. That's nice for
our purposes.
Run grep again and pop over into SoftICE (with Ctrl-D) to see what all is
running while the nag screen is up. We'll use the sICE TASK command.
>TASK ; see what tasks are running
There's GREP (our target). Hmm, and there's MKSDEMO (perhaps our nag). Click
CLOSE on the nag, then pop back into sICE and do TASK again. Yep, MKSDEMO was
the nag program (because it's no longer in our TASK list).
I originally thought (hoped) I could just fix the MKSDEMO.EXE and that all
would be happy. No such luck! Each little .EXE has its own date check built
in. I guess this is semi-good since it will take a little more work to crack
all these darn little .EXEs. Alas, after just a bit of poking around, I found
that while they did a good job by not relying on a single program for the meat
of the protection, that they did leave the door wide open. All the .EXEs use
the same routine to check the date, call the nag, etc. So, we just have to
do a little bit of work to crack them ALL!
On to the cracking... Let's dead list grep to see what's going on in there.
Disassemble with W32Dasm 8.9 and save the dead listing. Now, having run the
target and "felt" its behavior, we should have some good ideas on what we're
looking for. We could search for "MKSDEMO.EXE" and it would take us to the
section of interest. Or, how about searching for 278D00 (that's 30 days in
computer terms, 60 secs * 60 mins * 24 hours * 30 days = 259000 decimal or
278D00 hex) and we know 'puters prefer hex. Or, we could search for the text
of the expiration message "The MKS Toolkit demo has expired." Either search
will bring you close to the section of interest. You should find something
like this:
* Referenced by a (U)nconditional or (C)onditional Jump at Address:
|:00402A52(C)
|
:00402A65 8B45F8 mov eax, dword ptr [ebp-08] ; install date
:00402A68 05008D2700 add eax, 00278D00 ; plus 30 days
:00402A6D 3B45F4 cmp eax, dword ptr [ebp-0C] ; less than now
:00402A70 0F8D0D000000 jnl 00402A83 ; if so, go on.
* Possible StringData Ref from Data Obj ->"The MKS Toolkit demo trial period "
->"has expired."
|
:00402A76 68B0C34000 push 0040C3B0 ; ouch, time's up
:00402A7B E8FB000000 call 00402B7B
:00402A80 83C404 add esp, 00000004
* Referenced by a (U)nconditional or (C)onditional Jump at Address:
|:00402A70(C)
|
:00402A83 C70508C4400000000000 mov dword ptr [0040C408], 00000000
:00402A8D 6A00 push 00000000
:00402A8F 68A32B4000 push 00402BA3
* Reference To: USER32.EnumWindows, Ord:00C8h
|
:00402A94 FF15E0414100 Call dword ptr [004141E0]
:00402A9A 833D08C4400000 cmp dword ptr [0040C408], 00000000 ; hmmm?
:00402AA1 0F85CF000000 jne 00402B76 ; if non-zero, the func
:00402AA7 6A44 push 00000044 ; was successful and we
:00402AA9 6A00 push 00000000 ; make the jne
:00402AAB 6818094100 push 00410918
:00402AB0 E80B410000 call 00406BC0
:00402AB5 83C40C add esp, 0000000C
:00402AB8 C7051809410044000000 mov dword ptr [00410918], 00000044
* Reference To: USER32.GetForegroundWindow, Ord:00F9h
|
:00402AC2 FF15DC414100 Call dword ptr [004141DC]
:00402AC8 8945E4 mov dword ptr [ebp-1C], eax
:00402ACB 8B45E4 mov eax, dword ptr [ebp-1C]
:00402ACE 50 push eax
* Possible StringData Ref from Data Obj ->"mksdemo.exe %d"
|
:00402ACF 6834C44000 push 0040C434 ; we don't want
:00402AD4 8D4580 lea eax, dword ptr [ebp-80] ; to be here!!!
:00402AD7 50 push eax
:00402AD8 E8A3400000 call 00406B80
:00402ADD 83C40C add esp, 0000000C
The EnumWindows and GetForeGroundWindow are just setting up for the call
to our ugly nagger (mksdemo.exe). But, look at the conditional jump (jne)
after the call to EnumWindows.
The EnumWindows function enumerates all top-level windows on the screen
by passing the handle of each window, in turn, to an application-defined
callback function. EnumWindows continues until the last top-level window
is enumerated or the callback function returns FALSE.
BOOL EnumWindows(
WNDENUMPROC lpEnumFunc, // pointer to callback function
LPARAM lParam // application-defined value
);
Parameters
lpEnumFunc
Points to an application-defined callback function. For more information,
see the EnumWindowsProc callback function.
lParam
Specifies a 32-bit, application-defined value to be passed to the callback
function.
Return Values
If the function succeeds, the return value is nonzero.
If the function fails, the return value is zero.
I am not an ASM guru, nor a master of the Win32 API, but this looks like it
is setting up to CALL MKSDEMO.EXE, checking that it is the foreground window
and if so (return value is nonzero), it executes the jump (jne 00402B76). So
all it wants to do is launch mksdemo.exe successfully, allow it to become the
foreground window, then our target (SH.EXE) continues on its merry way. If it
does not successfully launch mksdemo.exe, it will bitch about it and let you
know. So, it appears that the jump to 00402B76 is a desireable thing. If
you look further down through the dead listing, you'll see lots of phrases
bitching about not being able to "properly execute MKSDEMO.EXE." And then,
at 00402B76 we prepare for our RETurn to caller. Let's have a look at this
code:
* Referenced by a Jump at Addresses:00402AA1(C), :00402B63(C)
|
:00402B76 5F pop edi
:00402B77 5E pop esi
:00402B78 5B pop ebx
:00402B79 C9 leave
:00402B7A C3 ret
As always, there are a million and one ways to crack this. But, I'm looking
for something generic because we have around 150 little .EXE's to patch. So,
let's see just how many birds we can kill with one stone! :-)
We want to get rid of the nag, and we've seen what sets it up and where we
need to go to bypass it. We also want our evaluation period to last forever
and we've seen the date test, too. Let's combine all this into a nice 4 byte
crack that fixes the whole mess. How about changing the date check to skip
the check and just jump to our RETurn to caller? So, to pinpoint this we want
to break in just before we compare install date+30 with current date. There
are a couple ways we could do this.
1) If we're still in our evaluation period, we could BPX EnumWindows. Then
scroll up to the add eax, 00278D00 instruction and set a breakpoint there.
However, if we're already past the point of no return, we'll never get to the
EnumWindows call. So, this probably isn't our best bet.
2) Before we can compare the install date+30 with the current date, the progie
has to get the current date from somewhere. Two of the more common ways it
can do this are: GetLocalTime and GetSystemTime. Our target happens to use the
latter. So let's toggle over into sICE (Ctrl-D) and set a breakpoint on this.
>bpx GetSystemTime
Run grep and sICE will pop on the GetSystemTime call. We need to get back into
our target, so press F12 twice (P RET twice). If you look down a few lines in
your code window, you'll see the line that adds 30 days to the install date.
This is the line from the code snipit above.
:00402A68 05008D2700 add eax, 00278D00
If you scroll down in your code window a little further you'll see the call to
EnumWindows. And after the call, there is the test to check its return value
and a conditional jump (jne 00402B76) if the function was successful. I think
what we'll do here is just skip the date test and jump right to the cleanup and
RETurn to caller (at address 00402B76). So, let's assemble in some new code:
>A
>JMP 00402B76
>(press Esc)
Now, jot down the hex representation for the JMP 00402B76. If you don't see
it turn your code display on in sICE.
>code on
The new instruction should look something like this:
:00402A68 E909010000 jmp 00402B76 ; jump over the whole nag mess
Remember the old instruction was:
:00402A68 05008D2700 add eax, 00278D00 ; add 30 days
So we've done a 4 byte crack, exchanging 05008D27 with E9090100. This seems
pretty elegant. Let's try it. Press Ctrl-D or F5 in sICE to continue running
the target. It runs, sans nag screen.
Let's now transfer this live crack into something more permanent. Load up
grep.exe into your favorite hex editor and make the following change:
Search: 05008D27
Replace:E9090100
Run it again. Beautiful, no nags. Set your date way ahead. Run again. Still
no nags. Hey this is pretty cool, but what about the remaining 150 damn .EXEs?
Well, the good news is that they all use the same code to do the dirty work.
In a few of them the "replace" string is slightly different because there is a
little more or less code in between, so they have to jump a different number of
bytes. Here's what you need to do to fix them all (starting with the ones that
deviate from our E9090100). The search string is the same for all (05008D27).
mksdemo.exe hehe, we won't need him any more
tksched.exe no date check, no nag
vdiff32.exe no date check, no nag
pg.exe E9D80000
sh.exe E9D80000
vi.exe E9D80000
viw.exe E9D80000
vpax.exe E9CB0000
For all the rest of the programs, search: 05008D27 and replace: E9090100.
That's it for this lesson. Hope this was fun and instructional.
Disclaimer: THIS ESSAY IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. ANY USE, MIS-USE
OR ILLEGAL ACTIVITY IS THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE READER.
Group GreetZ: Everyone in [Me'97/C4N], PC'97, UCF and CRACKING.
Personal GreetZ: josephco, niabi, +YOSHi, razzia, {fravia+, +gthorne and +ORC}!
Thank you for all your teachings. I hope I am repaying my debt of gratitude.
Invitation/Request: Since there are damn near 150 programs that need the same
search and replace performed, this would be an excellent opportunity to use a
"generic" patcher. Again, I'm no programming guru. I could probably come up
with some spaghetti code to do this, but I think we'd all benefit more seeing
how one of the masters would do this. So, I leave this as an open invitation
to any of you who'd like to enlighten us on programming a "generic" patcher
to carry out this repetitive work for us. How about it +gthorne, others???
+drlan
(c) +drlan 1997. All rights reversed
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