What happened to the good ol' days of hackers?

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[City Builder]

I'm not an angel by any means, yes I do buy my games from real stores, and I do support developers by doing so.  But what happened to the good ol' days of honest hackers that didn't include virus's and malware in their hacks?

I recently had to reinstall XP again because I picked up a virus/malware while trying out a supposed key generator to some software that I legally own but have lost the CD case that had the serial number sticky on it (for those that don't remember, I moved all my CDs to that electronic carousel storage unit, then moved them again to a more traditional storage container, so I've misplaced a few CD cases that had serial numbers on them for some applications and games that I've legally purchased) so I had to find serial number generators to get my software working again.  If it wasn't for this anti piracy protection of serial numbers when the applications already require that the cd stay in the drive, then I'd not have to look outside for a new serial number to make my software work properly.  So I downloaded a serial number generator for my software and sure enough it had malware vundo and some virus's tacked onto it that my virus scanner didn't pick up on.

I could have jumped through all kinds of hoops trying to get rid of it, which I started to do, or I could just delete the partition, create a new partition and reinstall XP and be 100% positive that it was gone which is what I did.  But what has happened to the good ol days of hackers supplying clean hacks, serial generators etc?  Now they've moved into some bull marketing system where they attempt to charge you a fraction of the cost of the software to give you a copy of the software which I hear is a lie and they just steal your money.  It's not like I am that much of a devil to do that, because I really won't give someone that's already being dishonest my credit card number to purcahse an illegal copy of some software, but I will download no cd cracks or serial number generators for apps and games that I legally own to make them work when I can't find the information bercause I've lost a box.

There was a time when hackers and crackers were working against the establishment, now it seems they are working against the user and causing all kinds of grief instead.  Where did this mentality come from?  Why are these sites even still up that distribute not only the hack but a virus to go along with it?  Where did this mentality come from that they feel the need to do damage to peoples computers when it use to be all about being against the establishment and helping users to overcome what the establishment put into place to make it harder to run legitimate software?

I really don't care that I had to reformat and reinstall XP, theres nothing on my main hard drive that isn't replaceable or that can't be wiped out, but it's the mental part of it, remembering back to the old' days when these folks were here to help you that disturbs me that it's no longer existant and the damaging hackers are so prevelant now instead.  It's a very strange mindset that one needs to have to purposely damage someones property.

Open for discussion.

P.S. Yeah I know, my explanation of my actions are along the lines of "My DOG ate the serial number" and that's fine.  Im usually one of the first people to jump in and defend others that say that they lost their game cd or their serial number was lost because I do know that with a sloppy environment one does lose things.  AND 2 years ago our puppy Weston did manage to destroy about 6 game serial numbers, 3 game cd's, multiple movie dvd's so I know that even though i'ts rather rare for it to happen, it really can happen.  Though this time I am NOT claiming that my dog ate the serial numbers and we do now have a 2 month old new puppy in the house (got another standard poodle puppy for xmas this year from my mother (I hope she doesn't make a habbit of this, 2 is enough already), and Im quite certain that by age 6 or 7 months this one too will start to eat cd cases if they are in reach).

[Unitedcat]

This is a strange issue indeed....
Because there is 3-4 sites that have a very nice service supplying mostly No-CD files.

One of them is a really big site with 14-18 mirrors, maybe more.

This is by no means cheap --- So who is paying for these sites.
It's very clear that this is NOT a hobby.

So how can they operate without almost any complaints from developers, those who release the games etc.

I've spoke with a developer for about 10 years ago privately. He stated that most virus / malware and so on is created
by the developers themself. Then spread to sites like the ones above. According to him these "big" sites is owned by the bigger
developers and bigger publishers (not registered in their names of course). The meaning with this is obvious. If 4 friends want a game
they by only one, then download the No-CD so all four can play the game cheap. He did mention that this was mostly advanced
self - encrypting virus that only did send data to certain ip - numbers reveling on what computer that a No-CD file was running.

This is 10 years ago so most people was running Win 95 (98). Not much security (if at all) in those OS's.

If the above is false or true I leave open, because I don't know what to think !!

What I do know is that its not the "Bootleg" makers in for ex. Singapore. They want to sell their stolen product.

Strange is that my $$-friend asked me how many copies of a game is considered "Good" sales. He also asked about store price in EU and US.
I told him that a game that sells 1-2Million is considered very good.
He was thinking for only 3-4 seconds, after he said "I fail to see any profit".
Many many people are supposed to share a very little cake....

I can quote the next thing he said....
"So now "They" are paying game makers, to keep people at home playing, away from the streets protesting as in the 60's".

I believe him cause he knows who "They" are.
I only know what "They" do  (sorry can't post that in an open forum)

About the old hackers, I think they still exist, but only on private sites that change location very often.

If all the above is True then the real hackers must be  Robin Hood  all of them 

Merry     Don't drop the Turkey when you take it out from the owen 

[City Builder]

I use to design a bit of software for a popular matchmaking software usable on the internet.  You can think of it as an addon to someone elses software and I put in phoning home code so that I knew what sites were using it and I could tell at a moments notice if it was a site that had paid me for the software or not.

I put up with the folks that passed it to their friends that ran the same software as there was little I could really do to stop them from doing so, but I had come up against one person that had decided to actually sell the software on a website as if it were their own.

It took me about 2 months but I finally got their ISP to shut down their domain, they moved to another ISP (web host) and started up and I chased them around for about a year, each time it became easier and easier to shut them down since I had gotten other web hosts to shut them down in the past.   I think they finally gave up trying to sell my software.

Which fits in with your idea or your friends idea of putting in code to phone home to see who was using it by the developers.  I don't know if I can really buy that unless it's a developer that has gone rogue from the company and put out a no cd crack because he's mad at his past employer.  Which is certain possible.

Anyway, i THINK you are right, that the old hackers, phreakers, etc are on very quiet private sites that change location.  There are some that are known very well in that community by name that do put out quality cracks without malware or virus's attached and they can still be found, but it baffles me the intent of some of these sites out there that obviously put out malware or virus's and for what reason they are there.

I hope not to drop the turkey this year, I do have my new santa oven mitts that Sammy came home with tonight.

[MaxBeta]

My opinion on this subject has historically taken the serious tone..  The expertise and knowledge.. of this segment of our techy nerdish community usually winds up being either an avenue to play on Power (mostly destructive) and the other of course is to make some elicit cash.. both victimize the unwary or someone who has to make choices to solve a problem.. (sort of like what CB found himself in)... so takes that chance.

Over time and the increasing sophistication of the Net the causal "hacker" type find it too much of a chore so those who are left are mostly the "dark-sided" types with agenda excuses to inspiration their dastardly creations.. these are also "contracted" to produce the cloned copies of games..and other popular software to fund their agendas.  So it is no wonder that they take every opportunity to add in their viral mechanism so to achieve their jollys by corrupting as many users as possible.

The way I personally handle it.. I just take every precaution I possible can..knowing that one slip can make work I could've avoided.  One point I've made to my kids.. who have a tendency to want to use "trainers" and other file altering items so a game is more to their liking.. and be exposed to Malware.. or worse.  So because of my work..I've been elected to "make" what they need.. sort of a stays within the family thing.  

Like UC says... there's always the faction to beware of.. that they exist.  Hopefully none of us here have to suffer through too many encounters with their output.

CB..I realize reinstalling most likely comes easy for you...and is a sure fire way to get everything in "pure" form again.  Me..I'm kind of lazy I guess.. I reformat every six months, depending on how much registry pollution I've accumulated from un-and re installations of software.  One thing that does help, I have multiple PCs..that share the load, which goes back to the time when I was constantly betaing any and everything that my time would allow.

 

[City Builder]

It's only now that I've taken to keeping stuff off of the primary C drive that wiping has become easier for me.  I like that having games and applications on other drives allows me to see after an OS reinstall what I need to reinstall right at a glance by simply looking to my D, or F or G or H drives and seeing what was installed in the past, I only wish that more game developers would put their saved game information to be either user configurable on where it goes (it would end up on my G drive which is my "data" drive) or to put them inside the installation folder so that I've got a backup when I reinstall the OS.  But putting it on my C drive makes it go bye bye when I reinstall the OS and if Im reinstalling because of malware or virus's then I don't save anything on the infected drive, so it all goes bye bye even though it might have been clean.

So yeah, for me it's real easy to do a wipe and reinstall of everything, anything really really important (like business stuff) gets stuffed onto thumb drives now as well as an external USB drive.  In that way I've got backups galore of really important things, like letters, or invoices etc.  Im ammassing quite the pile of thumb drives now and happy that I bought these 512mb drives when they were on clearance at the local staples for about $3.00 each.

So basically, they do it for their jollys I guess.

[MaxBeta]

That is the most efficient way to setup the root drive.. I do it for the performance and it keeps the OS from making error calls in some instances.

Like you I have nothing in the way of critical data or info resident on HD's it all goes to detactable backup units.. just what I'm currently playing or working on.  I make use of the luxury of having Lan PC's with most any game I might become interested in playing..so keeps me from re-installs on my Primary game PC.

I'm a worry wart.. about other's dealing with so many chores.  I know you have the savvy and expertise to get things the way you want them... it's just out of habit I still worry..  Probably comes from having kids... I dunno, but sounds like a good excuse atm   

[City Builder]

I freaked last night because I reinstalled XP from scratch on the newly created partition and everything went fine.  I then installed the video and sound drivers and some other software, then finally did a reboot after installing some windows updates.  Upon rebooting up came a dos style message that said  something to the effect that windows had stopped because the PCI.SYS file in Windows\System32\Drivers was either corrupt or missing and that using the recovery console might be able to fix it.

I've never used the recovery console but after having to call MS last night to activate XP (too many activations apparently) I was willing to try the recovery console instead of trying to call them to give them my CC and fix it.

I had no idea what I was doing really but I remembered back to my old Dos days, so I simply found the original PCI.SYS file in the I386 directory of the Win XP CD and copied it over (happy I could remember basic dos commands) to where it needed to go on the HDD and rebooted and it booted up fine.  It does make me wonder however how the PCI.sys file either disappeared or became corrupt.  I was about to reinstall XP once again last night after that error message because generally I've found that when installing an OS, if it even has a slight hiccup somewhere, then it's best to start over and do it again, fortunately after extensive use today it seems to be a-ok though.  But it did have me worrying about it.

Perhaps doing all the driver updates and windows updates without rebooting after each driver install caused some corruption in it, else I don't know what would have.

The other thing that confused me is that the PCI.SYS file on the CD was named something like PCI.S__ so I was unsure if I had to unpack it somehow (uncompress it) or what.  Instead I just renamed it to PCI.SYS on the HDD and all seems to be okay, I wonder if I skipped a step and somehow needed to uncompress the file or do something other than to name it properly on the HDD.

[MaxBeta]

   Glad you got it worked out... I would guess that a sys file like that needs to either become resident or replace..overwrite.. whatever the condition calls for. So if a system is up and running Hardware wise.. so as an OS reinstalls it might react wrong at the time of that portion of the installation.. then a reboot checkdown bumps into something that wasn't used..as expected.  Just my guess.. more bizarre things have been known to happen.   

[Unitedcat]

I remember when switching from Amiga 1000, 500 and a 3000  to a PC in 1993.

When I started to get the hang of the "PC Concept" , I begun to wonder what is this 
Why on earth is the first 640Kb so important in the DOS enviroment. It needs a special dos4gw file running to access memory over 1Mb 

The (by that time) 8 year old Amiga which was only a 16bit system could easily address 8Mb of memory.

There I was with a brand new 486dx2 PC system, witch was 32bit and more expensive then an Amiga 3000....

I was devastated with the quality of Microsoft's OS. Not to mention their Windows 3.11  .

This situation made me wanna sell the PC , even if I was going to lose some money. It was a horrible experience when I looked at
the DLL-Hell in windows.

That DLL-Hell have now grown to extreme proportions in XP ---- and much worse in Vista. The registry ---- No No No.

No Windows versions is of professional quality IMO.


Time to drink some Absint , the forbidden liqour 

[City Builder]

I on the other hand was estatic when I got my first 486 dx2 25Mhz computer and windows 3.1  Prior to that I had dos machines and then moved up to machines that at least had Xtree on them.  Then came my 486 and made a world of difference to me.  I bought my 486 on my mobil gasoline card, yeah Mobil was offering computer purchases to be payed for on the mobil gasoline credit card.  When I got done paying for that first 468, I think I ended up paying about 2800.00 for it.  When I think of it now, I realize what a rip off that was, but I was then hooked on BBS's as my primary form of social entertainment as I lived ontop of a mountain 65+ miles from the nearest form of civilized entertainment, so thinking back now I guess it was worth it.  Plus it allowed me many hours to learn how computers really work.

But as I've said in the past "We ran Windows 3.1 so our children wouldn't have to".