+ORC: A real university
published by +ORC - 29 October 1997
Greetings, new and old friends, I owe you some explanations.
And I have some work for you.
I'll tell you a (minor) secret: when I started publishing my tutorial on Usenet, back in 1995, I did not know exactly where I would have landed. My idea, to put it simply, was to take advantage of the might of Internet in terms of anonymity, international dimension, easy access and "just in time" modifiability, in order to spread a very simple message using (as major vector) software cracking... this I deemed necessary coz verba movent, exempla trahunt.
My message was threefold:
- knowledge should from now on be free, we should not allow any barrier whatsoever any more;
- everybody should not only be allowed, but also helped to develop his capacities;
- the consum oriented society wherein we are compelled to live is NOT free, nor correct, nor the best possible one, far from it. We must help others, blinded by a well-concerted propaganda, to realise this.
If you examine these three sentences, you'll see that they support each other and that these same principle have been, many centuries ago, at the basis of the foundation of the "real" universities all over Europe.
The word "university" is in itself a sort of synonym for "international dimension"... indeed knowledge does not care about national or physical frontiers, nor worries about different social systems, racial or gender differences.
Language of course can (and did) represent a problem for the diffusion of knowledge (and more generally for the relations between humans), yet the english 'pidgin' used to-day on the Web is a good (albeit emendable) solution. The fact that many among us are NOT English native speakers seems fortunately to represent a negligible problem nowadays.
Now, you see, in our to-day world knowledge is often (if wrongly) connected to software. Software importance is due to its paramount importance for all modern scientific disciplines. These are deemed important in order to create (and sell) the incredible amount of useless gadgets that let this society roll on towards its own well deserved doom.
Note -incidentally- that 'humanistic' disciplines are nowadays reserved only to the very rich people, poor slaves are not supposed at all to study greek or latin, or poetry or philosophy... vita sine litteris mors est! Young 'university level' slaves are tricked into following scientific 'trends' which may be useful for a short span, but whose short life will secure to the same gullible slaves an unemployed or under-employed miserable status later on. Or does anyone of you think that he could get teached in some other 'real world' university 'trend' courses that what he is learning here?.
Anyway I felt that it was pretty important to use in this context the only scalpel I know of, since software and Internet are indeed a knowledge vector. This scalpel of mine is (you have guessed it :=) a cracking attitude.
When I started the +HCU project, inside my "C" lessons, in April 1996, I basically wanted to find some help: i.e. someone else capable of disclosing our art, some fellow crackers capable of carrying on and ameliorate the kind of work I was trying to do.
The "Instant Access" strainer was -alas!- much too hard for the "scene" knowledge of that time (I believe that now many of you would crack that crap much more easily). And I got very few answers. My luck was that I have found very good students among those few.
Unfortunately in the last two semesters I was taken by other projects (which have much more to do with 'history cracking' than with software cracking as +gthorne knows :=) and I did not have the time to follow my very good (and few) students.
Yet their work nonetheless (or may be for this very reason :=) went beyond all my expectancies: reverser+ and +gthorne, with the help of +Sync, did develop something that surpasses by far, for contents and available free knowledge, anything I had ever seen on the net before.
A real "Academy" (as reverser+ has called it) of software deprotection that serves already now as comprehensive reference for all 'protectionists' and de-protectionists alike (and you should hear the deference and admiration that has been expressed by some 'very high' software bonzes for many of the essays that have been published there :=)
The "Microsoft" strainer of April 1997 inside my lesson 4.2 found a much greater audience. Potius sero, quam nunquam. Inside our 1998 +HCU courses we will have a dozen of students, clearly too many to be followed and tutored as they deserve by me alone.
I will therefore create once more various 'units', but this time I'll try to place inside each one of them some experienced crackers together with some less experienced ones. each unit will be targeted towards some specific project (yet of course anyone will be able to swap courses if he likes so).
Next year we will therefore have a REAL university (or at least the beginning of it). It will of course be completely free, for anybody that has deserved it through is work.
I'll personally invite some "famous" crackers (friends of mine) to give you "ad hoc" (or ad personam) specific courses... and during our 1998 academic year we will meet (figuratively speaking :=) some eminent "hacker" personality too.
The "real" universities of yesterday have also been a cosmopolite meeting point... people from many nations and languages and social situations have brought there their personal contribution... this allowed formidable progresses and an incredible evolution of the societies of those times.
Our society has come to an awful regression point. Useless nationalism and petty provincial attitudes are rampant (even inside the 'real world' universities :=( while at the same time few international commercial oligarchs are dominating the whole world as if it where a conquered "Unicum".
Everything seems to be geared towards consume and money, as if the main wish of humanity should consist in an 'hamster' life, hoarding useless gadgets and munching them with full cheeks while loosing at the same time more and more all the precious attributes that form the "quality of life".
Software will be used in that sense too: giving them more and more VIRTUAL life quality and hiddenly stealing the last real bits of it.
Our university will be really 'universal'... some of you may -already now- have many friends from different continents, good friends that they may never have met, but that they read and/or hear every day, friends that 'in the real world' come in all varieties of colours, religions, beliefs and costumes. It's the human race coming together anew after dozen of thousands of years, something that our forefathers could only have dreamed of. It's a vulcan we are sitting on, and we should contribute to crack it open.
In fact for once in history our diversities make us STRONG instead than feeble. They help us to develop even quicker than our masters. It's an old lesson: when the provincialism of a closed society is broken, when input and ideas can circulate freely (and the anonymity of the web plays a very important catalitic role in all this) then an incredible rhythm can be conveyed to the development of each one of us.
Let's also not forget that our very craving for knowledge, together with our longing for justice, represents already now a considerable power, a power that some of our enemies are beginning to feel. We are at the right place in the right moment, don't forget it never.
I would like to try to perform an 'assessment' of the capabilities of each one of you that goes beyond the (easy) strainer that you have solved this sommer. You are not compelled to take part to this 'project', and since you passed the strainer you'll be admitted to the courses on the first of January anyway, of course, yet if you only find the time, I would like you all to partecipate, I would like more elements to 'group' you for the courses. Besides I believe that this project is interesting per se (I got the idea for this project from lazy reverser+ :=)
The Acrobat project, preparation for the 1998 +HCU courses
ACROBAT FORMAT FILES security settings have not yet been cracked, AFAIK, and therefore this makes the target a very nice (and very interesting and very important) project to work on. Acrobat format files are those *.pdf files in portable document format that you can only read (yet not write) with the free Adobe reader. The idea behind this being, as usual, common greed. If Adobe had given to anybody reader and acrobat (writer) for free, this (very good) format would have been by now the standard on the web. Yet they just wanted to make money. Result: only few people are using this. We'll change all this right now!
First (this should be easy if you work in group): Defeat the security settings: a PDF document author can choose to restrict access to a file by requiring an open password or by restricting the use of certain tools and commands. If a file requires an open password, you must enter the password to view the file. When a file has restricted access, any restricted tools and menu items are dimmed. We don't like 'restricted access' per definition, so crack this :=)
Second (this is a little more difficult, but you'll have great satisfaction if and when you master it): a good comprehension of this pdf format will allow you to quickly write a *.txt ==> *.pdf file converter which we will then distribute (of course for free) on the net. Yes, we'll do now that what Adobe should have madeby itself long ago.
De nihilo, nihil:
You'll find some first info (and you'll be able to download reader) at http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/ At the beginning of your work you'll quikly find out that there is already a first (bad) attempt at cracking this format on the web. Actually it is not a 'crack', but a programmer that wanted to port acrobat to another platform (and had some problems with Adobe, of course). You'll be able to download there some files specifications that will spare you a lot of work.
You'll have to perform some social engineering as well, in order to get the info you need: that is good, a good cracker IS a social engineer.
I believe you'll have to work a little to crack this project which will teach you a lot in my opinion, and there is another advantage: THIS CAN BE SOLVED ONLY IF YOU WORK TOGETHER, i.e. not alone, try by yourself to form little groups, you'll see how quikly you'll get to the solution thattaway.
Work well
+ORC
