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iKeygen music | |
iFebruary 22nd, 2018 | |
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i | |
iI listened to Solderpunk's awesome new anonradio show, Half Hour | |
iof Power, which was a fantastic assortment of chiptunes. I had | |
iforgotten how fun chiptunes can be and I'd also forgotten about | |
ia similar school of music that I used to be really into, Keygen | |
iMusic! | |
i | |
iFirst, some background for those of you not immediately familiar | |
iwith the concept. When downloading illegal software you often have | |
ito find a crack or serial number to use it. Most software that | |
irequires registration uses some mathematical and programatic | |
imethod to validate the serial number that you enter. Fantastically | |
ibrilliant coders will use special software to freeze the operation | |
iof the program and step through its assembly operations in order | |
ito discover what these validation mechanisms are. | |
i | |
iIf they are amazing enough, they can write a small patch to the | |
iexecutable that will bypass or falsely validate a serial number as | |
ivalid. The patch literally rewrites the machine code to "JMP" past | |
ithe validation to a success area in memory. That's a crack! | |
i | |
iIf the coder is ever more amazing and sly, rather than changing | |
ithe application--like a crack--they'll write their own program | |
ithat can create a valid serial number by working backwards. If | |
ithey can decypher how a program is validated, they can create | |
ia successful string of data. This is a keygen, and in my opinion | |
isome of the most sophisticated and beautiful demonstrations of | |
icode in existence. | |
i | |
iI don't know when keygens started adding music to their little | |
iprograms, but the popularity quickly took off. Interestingly, the | |
imusic used for keygens often used the same technologies and | |
iformats as game chiptunes: MOD, XM, or S3M [0] for example. These | |
itracker formats have some amazing, unique sounds and offer quite | |
ia bit of control for their musicians. | |
i | |
iAs the years went by, I've saved my favorite tunes, often by | |
iripping them from the keygens themselves. I like to think of the | |
iact of "cracking" a keygen as a kind of computer nerd poetry. | |
iAlso, the music is awesome. | |
i | |
iIf you want to try out some keygen music for yourself, it's much | |
ieasier these days. There's a great site that archives so much of | |
ithe scene's music [1]. If you want to listen to my personal keygen | |
imusic mix, grab the rar of my archive here [2] | |
i | |
iPerhaps I should have made an anonradio show of it myself, but | |
iI'd rather share it secretly with all you foxy gophers. | |
i | |
[0] S3M format | |
[1] Keygen Music | |
[2] Tomasino's Keygen Mix |