Wait, you mean client-side anticheat is not some holy unbreakable barrier? I am shocked (sarcasm)
You are an idiot. This is quite exciting.
What is denuvo? Would someone break down how it works. It sounds like an interesting thing to learn from as I think they used 18bit encryption for early pioneers that it was for coded placement for locked sections of a nest portal. These were introduced to Nintendo i think for games like Zelda. I think it was denuvo that had been early ways of releasing full games. The only thing I could remember from something with computers but it’s been years since I ever worked on computers. Denuvo sounds very familiar from what I had seen a long time ago.
Sharing chatgpt answer as I was curious myself
Denuvo differs from older DRM by continuously protecting the game’s code instead of just checking ownership once. Traditional systems like Steam or SecuROM perform a one-time validation, but Denuvo embeds encryption, obfuscation, and constant runtime checks directly into the executable, making it much harder to analyze or modify. The recent bypass described by Tom’s Hardware didn’t actually “crack” Denuvo in the traditional sense. Instead, it used a hypervisor, a low-level virtualization layer, to sit between the game and the operating system and feed Denuvo fake “valid” responses so it believes everything is legitimate. This avoids removing the protection entirely and instead tricks it. The tradeoff is that the method requires disabling core Windows security features, which creates serious system-level risks and is why even some in the piracy community consider it unsafe.
That was a beautiful response i used to like DRM as there used to be vaults for saving your product now it’s just a mess as these companies used to use viruses to modified DRM. I think it’s gonna prevent hacking but why ruin a whole system. The thing about DRM was that I could remember that it had used these prompt servers DLL and thats when I feel like if you tested the outward ping and inward ping it would detect these spyware built inside these games sometimes. I think pingserver used to detect this stuff and it was important because there has been so much modification to games that people make and steal whats needed to make money off you. I think it’s called pingserver you should test these new games as they rely on internet more than ever now.
When are Denuvo games coming to GOG and itch.io? We feel extremely left out guys.
GOG is strictly anti-DRM, so you’ll never get Denuvo-enable games there. You miiiiiight get them after Denuvo gets pulled out since that often happens after… 6 months? A year or two? But the sort of publisher that wants Denuvo included is probably the same kind to refuse a totally DRM-free release.
…I should’ve added the /s, come to think of it.
On the one hand software freedom.
On the other this has me thinking about how fascinating this problem is from academic standpoint.
How can you ensure software can ONLY run on the machines you allow? Even if the user has ring 0 access?
Is it mathematically impossible to achieve?
It’s totally possible to achieve. TPM is the desktop equivalent of the technology that runs on your cellphone to have apps detect if you have an unlocked bootloader or root. It’s the same technology prevents your favorite concole (ie: switch 2, ect) from running pirated games.
This improved security does come at a price: we/the users are the enemy and cannot be trusted. This means modifying your system will be prohibited and we (the consumer) will have to trust that Big Tech has our best interests in mind. /s
What’s preventing spoofing this with a fake implementation?
To expand on this a bit:
It’s all built on top of the concept of “a chain of trust”, starting at the hardware level.
(as mentioned) TPM is a chip that’ll store encryption keys at a hardware level and retrieval of these keys can only happen if the hardware is unmodified.
I assume that part of this key is derived from aspects of your OS (ie: all device drivers are signed by MS).
The OS will fetch this key, if it’s valid - the OS knows that the hardware is untampered, it can then verify that the OS is unmodified, which can then be used by application to determine that their not modified, etc.
Now you could spoof your own TPM chip (similar to how Switch 1’s are chipped/nodded), but the deal-breaker is that when you add your key to the TPM chip, you sign it with a hardware vendor specific public key. And that vendor private key is baked into the hardware (often into the CPU, so the private key never crosses the hardware bus).
But at the end of day, doesn’t app have to ask OS? At that stage, can’t you spoof “positive” responce of unmodified system?
That’s the strength of public/private key encryption.
The application (or OS) knows what the hardware vendors public key is. Thus ,it can verify that any message (or application key) claiming to come from that hardware (TPM) is legitimate or not. Thus, the OS is just a proxy or the middle man.
Now what you could do (in theory) is to start modifying the application and replace the hardware vendor public key with your own. …but you’d need to do this with every application and they’ll probably have some sort of anti-tampering or (more likely) you won’t even be allowed to install the application because your OS isn’t “safe/secure”.
disclaimer: I’m a bit hazy on some of these details. There are probably more elegant solutions.
