UNITED cRACKING fORCE
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- The correct title of this article is uNITED cRACKING fORCE. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
The uNITED cRACKING fORCE (uCF), also known as uCF2000, is a warez group specializing in the removal of copy protection from software programs. Established in February of 1994 by mARQUIS dE sOIRE, although the group's first release was not until April 1994. uCF was run by mARQUIS until he left the group in October 1998. The group continued on under different leadership and celebrated their 10th year in operation in 2004. As of 2005 uCF is still active and releasing.
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[edit] Release History
| u C F releases by year | |
| April – December 1994 | 63 cracks |
| January – December 1995 | 163 cracks |
| January – July 1996 | 272 cracks* |
| January – December 1997 | 603 cracks |
| January – December 1998 | 628 cracks |
| January – December 1999 | 534 cracks |
| January – December 2000 | 857 cracks |
| January – October 2001 | 536 cracks* |
| January – September 2002 | 573 cracks* |
| January – June 2003 | 599 cracks* |
| January – May 2004 | 629 cracks* |
| January – December 2005 | xxx cracks* |
| Lifetime total: | 5,457 cracks* |
| * indicates incomplete total | |
A prolific group, uCF released many cracks from the mid-to-late 1990s continuing until the present day, ranging from software titles such as the Opera Web Browser to Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge to Adobe's Image Ready to Citrix MetaFrame (a more complete list can be found here). However uCF did not merely crack software. As was often the case, they wrote key generation algorithms to allow users to create their own seemingly valid serial numbers to fool the programs into thinking they were legally registered.
Key generation is much more difficult for software firms to counter. Rather than simply blacklisting a single serial number, a Keygen forced the software company to spend time and money creating an entirely new serial number verification system. A notable example of this was the shift from Microsoft's XXX-XXXXXXX numeric format for serials in Windows 95 due to widespread piracy to the more complicated XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX alphanumeric serial format for software released from Windows 98 onwards. When that format was broken, Microsoft again changed its system to an even more complex system requiring product activation for the release of Windows XP, Office XP and newer products.
In some cases the debugging tools (such as SoftICE) used to break the software protection was inadequate to the task, or even intentionally broken by the copy prevention technique. Some applications checked for and caused a system halt if SoftICE was found running, in these cases uCF members often relied upon tools they themselves created to analyze the underlying code – one of these products was ProcDump32.
uCF claims to have been the first group to break a dongle protection scheme. This claim is widely debated among software crackers and other warez group members (especially on EFnet). Other cracking groups to claim this credit are Phrozen Crew, C0RE, and TNO – although the ones with the most plausible counter-claim is Phrozen Crew (which was created around the same time as uCF).
uCF has also on occasion broken an entire company's copy protection system – FLEXlm [1] (now called FLEXNet and a thriving licensing system) & VBox (now extinct) were two notable examples. These cracks in particular caused widespread panic among their respective creators whose incomes were dependent on marketing these protection systems. GLOBEtrotter Software, Inc. manufacturers of FLEXlm was sold to Macrovision (another vendor of DRM and copy protection products). Preview Systems (makers of VBox) went out of business and was purchased by Aladdin Knowledge Systems. These bankruptcies were due in part to the effect uCF's removal kits had upon their bottom lines.
[edit] Member roles
Although uCF does not make a practice of publishing their member list, several members have attained a "Hall of Fame" status within the group, including: Misha, ED!SON, DjPaul, Sage, Lost Soul, M. Musashi, Solar Designer, Jammer, Acpizer, mARQUIS dE sOIRE, j0b, TwinHead, The Riddler, Random, Bunter, LordByte, xOANON, and Quantico.
According to NFO files from 1998 the group consisted of four departments:
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- Founder: mARQUIS dE sOIRE
- President: Lordbyte
- Vice President: Xoanon
- Head Cracker: G-RoM
- Co-Head Cracker: Lorian
- Member Coordinator: t00nie
- Public Relations Director: netking
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- BunteR, |Jake|, RegoR, Stone, Dark Stalker, Hendrix, SHamPster, _Shaman
- RyDeR_H00k!, foSSiL, Sun-Tzu`, Nobody, Quantico, tHeRain, Sp0t, _MuFFiN_
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- Scamp, Fryguy, FanTomE
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- CyberJak, Avatar, ph0nejack, Alkivar
[edit] In print
- PC World December 1999. Alt.net column Cracking Up by Scott Mendham – article is about the cracking scene in general, uCF is mentioned.
[edit] External links
- The Levelling Effect - Telepolis (Heise) article by John Horvath (1997) about the impact of software piracy in Central and Eastern Europe, specifically citing uCF.
- Reality Check Network Issue #22 - Contains an interview with Founder mARQUIS and Cracker Misha
- UCF_96.NFO - A copy of an NFO from the release of Terminate Keymaker v4.0 in (April 1996).
- ProcDump32 v1.6.2 - by G-RoM, Lorian and Stone (January 18 2000).
- Personal blog of xOANON, early member of uCF now devoted to kernel developing (contains pop-ups)
