How to protect cd disk from copying. Ways to protect CDs from copying. Any CD is a set of pits and lands

In the age of information technology, the development of methods for storing and protecting information is becoming a particularly relevant research topic for research teams and single enthusiasts. Protection requires not only software products, but also works of art recorded and stored on disks, personal information of citizens.

How to protect a disk from copying? There are programs to protect discs with information from being copied. For example, CD-Protect, which creates special bad areas on the disk that are recognized by the protection system. According to them, the disks are divided into friend or foe. Copying a protected disk to a hard drive will crash the system. This is one of the programs that really protects disks.

SafeDisc v3 encrypts the main program module using a specific key. A digital signature is applied to the disk, corresponding to this key in size from 3 to 20 megabytes. The authenticity of a protected disk is recognized in 10-20 seconds, and then you can work with it. To remove protection from such a disk, you need to change the encrypted module.

LaserLock encrypts files and laser-marks the disc using optional hardware. In theory, copying a protected disk is impossible. And practically found several ways to bypass this program.

Several methods of copying

If there are problems of protecting a disk from copying, then methods have already been invented to solve the opposite ones. Protected discs are successfully copied using the information for their own purposes.

One of the most common programs that allows you to copy protected DVDs is Alcohol 120%, which is a CD / DVD emulator. The program creates a secure disk image on the computer's hard drive with all the information that other programs can access. The image is taken as a normal disk in the drive. The program can work simultaneously with 31 images and allows you to copy discs protected with SafeDisc, LaserLock, Securom.

Another program for copying protected discs is Blindwrite. With its help, you can create identical copies of CD / DVD-disks, remove information from protected discs of various formats, even if there are mechanical damages (scratched and worn). Developers regularly update this program.

Specialists in the field of programming and information technology come to the conclusion that there is no absolutely reliable way to protect discs from copying. After all, the more carefully they develop a method of protection, the more difficult it is, on the other hand, to come up with programs for reading and copying protected disks.

Developers have long tried to protect their creations from unauthorized use. Recently, the protection of CDs from illegal copying has become especially relevant. After all, now a CD-RW is not much more expensive than a regular CD-ROM, so everyone who is not too lazy is engaged in recording discs. So the developers are trying to prevent those who are not lazy from copying discs with their products. Below is a minimum of tasks that, in my opinion, a good CD protection should solve:

Do not just copy "one to one" disk on the matrix.
A protected disk should not work in a "virtual form", i.e. when the disk image is written to the hard drive and, with the help of a special driver, all CD-ROM operations are emulated.
The code that implements the first two points must be protected from research and modification. Those. you need to make it difficult to use debuggers, disassemblers, etc.
Do not interfere with the user's work with the CD: the disc must be freely readable by all CD-ROMs and, if it is an AudioCD, by all CD players.

Let's take a look at a few popular CD copy protections. Let's start with protections for data disks.

CD Protect

This protection is based on low-level disk handling. Bad sectors are created on the disk, which are determined by the protection system. By these bad sectors, you can divide disks into your own / someone else's. According to the developers, an attempt to copy data from such a disk to a hard drive will cause the system to crash. Attempts to copy a protected CD using special programs (CDClone, CDRWIN, etc.) will also not give positive results. This is one of the few protections that can actually protect a CD.

SafeDisc v3

The latest version of "advanced" protection from Macrovision Corporation. SafeDisc v3 was used to protect most popular games released after November 2003. The main module of the protected application (EXE or DLL) is encrypted using a certain key. Then, in accordance with this key, a digital signature is written to the disk, which takes from 3 to 20 megabytes (depending on the degree of protection). Disk authentication occurs within 10-20 seconds. SafeDisc v3 even supports virtual disks, ie. After successfully identifying the CD, you can continue working with the virtual disk. The only way found to remove the protection is to fix the encrypted module.

laser lock

This protection, in addition to encrypting files, puts a unique laser mark on the surface of the disk. Because additional equipment is used for this, it is almost impossible to copy a disc with such protection. In theory. And practically there are several ways to "deceive" LaserLock. The simplest is to use the BlindRead program (www.blindread.com), which will allow you to copy a protected disk. You've seen LaserLock used on discs of (legal) games like Fallout 2 or Metro Police.

Now let's move on to protections for music CDs.

Key2Audio

This protection prevents the CD from being played on a computer, while there are no problems when listening to the disc in home CD players. Key2Audio does not affect the quality of the music in any way. The essence of protection is as follows: when recording a disc, several unique signatures are placed outside the area of \u200b\u200bmusical data, which can be compared with human fingerprints. These signatures, according to the developers, cannot be duplicated by any CD burner. As a result, it turns out that you can easily make an analog copy of music, but with a digital one there is a snag. But, as it turned out, the CDClone program, with the appropriate settings, allows you to get a working copy of the CD. Key2Audio was used to protect promotional copies of the Michael Jackson single "You Rock My World".

BayView Systems

This protection is designed to stop the appearance of compositions on the Internet before the official release of the CD. To do this, only part of the music is recorded on the disc, and the rest is transmitted via the Internet to CD sellers and radio stations on the day the disc is released.

We have reviewed several popular commercial CD protections, and now a few words about programs that allow you to "bypass" these protections. CloneCD (www.elby.de) is the most suitable for copying discs. This program can really do a lot, but each CD protection system needs its own settings for CloneCD. Therefore, additional programs are used to determine the type of protection for a given disk and transfer the appropriate settings to CloneCD. An example of such a program is ClonyXL (www.cdmediaworld.com/cgi-bin/dlcmw.cgi?ClonyXLFinal_eng!zip). The program is free, 271 Kb.

And now let's look at programs that do not "break" protection, but do the exact opposite - they protect CDs.

win lock

This is a very simple program that works in conjunction with CDRWin (www.goldenhawk.com). The whole job of WinLock is to create a cue file, according to which CDRWin, after writing the necessary data, will add several dummy tracks with music and data to the CD. These tracks do not contain anything useful, and their size is kept to a minimum. However, they will not fit into the logical structure of the disc, so some CD ripping programs will refuse to copy such a disc. But there should be no problems with writing a disc to a hard drive.

Easy Audio Lock

This program serves to protect AudioCD. After applying Easy Audio Loc, the music disc cannot be listened to on the computer. This is achieved by placing incorrect data in the TOC (Table of Contents).

TZcopyprotection

This program does more than the previous ones. It also allows you to create dummy tracks, but you can put the necessary files in one of them, without which the CD will be useless. So copying only the main track will become pointless. In addition, TZcopyprotection allows you to make the size of any file on the disk equal to 2 GB (if the initial settings are not changed), which will make it difficult to store the CD image on the hard drive. True, in this case, you need to select a file for which the checksum is not calculated.

Unfortunately, I did not manage to "reach out" to the home pages of these free programs, so I posted them on the page www.IvanFDC.narod.ru/download.html.

It only remains to add that even very expensive disc copy protection systems do not always cope with their duties, so you should not hope for absolute protection of your CD. In my opinion, it is better to just encrypt secret files with a reliable algorithm.

Instruction

One of the most common copy protection systems is the StarForce system. The creators of the system guaranteed absolute copy protection to game manufacturers, but with the right approach, the disc can still be copied. Consider copying a protected disk using the Alcohol 120% program. This program can be easily found in and installed on your . Alcohol 120% will not only copy data from the disk, but also transfer information about its physical structure to a special file that is read by the emulator during the recording process, which in turn will emulate delays that mimic StarForce protection.

Insert the disc to be copied into your . Launch the Imaging Wizard in the Alcohol 120% program. Do not forget to check the "enable emulator" checkbox, and select Starforce 1.x / 2.x as the data type. Click "Next". The program for successful copying will need to first create a virtual image. Give a name to the created file, select the *.mds format and tell the program the folder where it will write the disk image. Disable all unnecessary active applications, set the read speed of the drive to a minimum. The more carefully Alcohol 120% reads the source disc, the more likely it is to be able to cope with the protection. Depending on the power of the computer, after some time the creation of the virtual image will be completed, you can remove the disk from the drive.

With the recorded virtual image, you can do different things. The best solution would be to link the image to a virtual disk. The Alcohol 120% program, in fact, specializes in this. But you can try and burn it to a physical disk. When recording, Alcohol 120% reads protection data from the information file and tries to completely recreate a physical copy of the disk you need. Write speed, as well as when reading, you need to choose the minimum. After a while, your disk will be ready.

Sometimes there is a need to create discs with copy protection. For example, every second operator who is engaged in video filming of events (holidays, matinees, weddings) creates protected discs. But what if you have burned such a disc, but the original has been erased on your computer? Most write-protected discs are designed in such a way that the information on these discs is read but not copied. This problem can be solved by some programs that create disk images with support for protection systems.

You will need

Alcohol 120%

Instruction

One of these programs is the Alcohol 120% utility. This program will create a complete image on your hard drive. Alcohol supports most disc formats, allows you to work with 30 images at the same time. Also, this utility allows you to copy discs that you have burned using protection.

Launch the Image Making Wizard. Select your burner - select data type - Starforce 1.x/2.x. Also pay attention to the Data Position Measurment item. Check this box. Click "Next".

Enter the name of the future image. Click on "Start" - select the read speed of your disk. Set the speed to the lowest. It will take a lot of time, but the quality of the image will increase significantly. It is worth closing all open programs, because. they can take up system resources, which can adversely affect the future disk image. Then click "OK", wait for the completion of this operation.

After copying the image file, check its performance by mounting it on the virtual disk of the program itself.

Sources:

How to remove disk write protection, otherwise protection prevents recording

Every person has their own secrets. And the more computers penetrate people's lives, the more secrets they trust to keep the machine. But storing private information on a personal computer is not safe at all. Even if user accounts are protected by passwords, even if a password is set in the BIOS, anyone with physical access to the computer can turn off the hard drive and copy information from it. And when people realize this frightening fact, they involuntarily think about how to encode a disk and thereby reliably protect their data. Fortunately, there are now reliable free programs that provide the necessary functionality.

You will need

Free TrueCrypt data encryption software available for download from truecrypt.org.

Instruction

Start the process of creating a new encrypted volume. Launch TrueCrypt. Select "Volumes" and "Create New Volume..." from the menu. The "TrueCrypt Volume Creation Wizard" will open. On the wizard page, select "Encrypt a non-system partition/drive" and click the "Next" button. On the next page, select "Standard TrueCrypt volume", click the "Next" button. On the third page, click the "Select Device" button. In the "Select a Partition or Device" dialog that appears, select the disk to be encrypted, click "OK". Click the "Next" button. The next wizard will open. Select "Create encrypted volume and format it", click "Next". Next, specify the encryption algorithms and hashing in the drop-down lists of the current page, click the "Next" button. Click the Next button again. In the "Password" field, enter the password for the disk, in the "Confirm" field, confirm the entered password. Click "Next".

Format the drive. Move the mouse cursor randomly for a while within the current page of the Encrypted Volume Creation Wizard. This is necessary to generate random for encryption algorithms. Select the file system and volume cluster size from the drop-down lists. Click the "Format" button. In the warning dialog that appears, click Yes.

Wait for the formatting process to finish. This can take a long time if the disk partition being formatted is large enough. In the dialogs with messages that appear after formatting, click the "OK" buttons. Press the "Exit" button.

Mount the new encrypted volume. In the main program window, click the "Select Device..." button. In the dialog that appears, select the encrypted volume, click the "OK" button. In the list at the top of the application window, select any drive letter. Click the "Mount" button at the bottom of the TrueCrypt window. A dialog will appear for entering the disk access password. Enter password. A new drive will appear in the list of computer disks, indicated by the letter you selected earlier.

Copy the files saved in the first step to the encrypted volume. Use the file manager program, or the functions of the operating system.

Any CD is a set of pits and lands

A CD is a flat surface (called a land) with a reflective layer on which pits are applied - small depressions of different lengths. The pits are located on the disk in a spiral (starting from the center of the disk and towards its edge) and form a "path". The way the pits are arranged on the surface of the disk is called the topology of the disk. Moreover, the track thickness of a DVD disc is less than that of a CD disc, so more information is placed on it. Each CD exactly repeats the topology of the stamper from which the disc is printed at the factory. Stamper, in turn, exactly repeats the topology of the master disk or gold-master, from which the stamper is made. The stamper is suitable for printing several tens of thousands of discs, after which it wears out and must be replaced with a new one. Thus, any of the compacts printed from one stamper exactly repeats its topology.

In 1988, Sony and Philips published the so-called Orange Book, which described the specifications of a recordable compact disc - CD-R. Since then, the life of all copyright holders releasing their works on optical media has become very complicated. A few years later, CD-ROM drives with the ability to record began to be widely sold in the world. And although the cost of such devices reached several thousand dollars, the trend was clearly visible. Now anyone could make a copy of the CD, and moreover - not just make, but also replicate such copies on an unlimited scale. Ever since the cost of recorders has fallen below $100, the threat to intellectual property has assumed gigantic proportions. The industry faced the question: how to protect an optical disc from copying? How to make the copied disk not work?

It was then that many ways to protect CDs from copying appeared. Several of them have survived to this day.

Applying non-copy marks

This method is based on the fact that the recording drive cannot write to some areas of the disk. Such areas are set at the factory that produces the discs. When copying, data from such areas cannot be transferred to the copy. When launched, the program reads data from these non-copyable areas and, in case of their mismatch or absence, refuses to start.

The most unreliable and outdated way. Requires expensive additional equipment installed at the factory.

Creation of twin sectors

The fact is that the sequence of pits on the surface of the disk forms sectors. All sectors are numbered. Two sectors with the same number on the disk, according to the standards, cannot be. It is theoretically impossible for a conventional recorder to create two sectors with the same number on a disk. However, in industrial production it is possible. This is what this method of copy protection is based on. Two or more sectors are created with the same number but different contents. If, when checking the disk, the protection understands that the same sectors contain different data, the check passes. Otherwise, the copy will not start.

Until (until the summer of 2007) the new DeamonTools Pro optical disc emulator came out, allowing home recorders to do twin sectors, this method was the most reliable. However, it requires time-consuming configuration of the factory-installed software. At the moment, it can only be sold at one plant in the world.

Binding to the unique topology (geometry) of the optical disk

As already mentioned, groups of pits are formed into sectors. Sectors are numbered. If you sequentially read different sectors and measure the time between read operations, then you can compose the geometric structure of the disk.

During the production of a master disk, its unique geometrical parameters are measured. They are encrypted into a key, which is then used to verify the disk.

During the production of conventional CD-R/DVD-R discs, sectors are immediately marked on them. Subsequently, the recording program only writes to them sequentially, which eliminates the exact repetition of the location of the sectors of the master disk. Moreover, if the write speed of the copy is different from the write speed of the master disc, the sectors will be arranged differently. In the process of checking the disk, the protection measures the angle between the sectors on the disk and compares it with the reference ones. If the results match, the test passes. Otherwise, the program will not start.

At the moment, this method is the most optimal in terms of price / quality ratio. In addition, no additional costs are required - everything is produced at any plant using existing technologies and available equipment.

Binding to a unique topology (geometry) of an optical disc with changing mastering parameters

The principle is similar to the previous one - measuring the geometric characteristics and checking them with the data encrypted in the key. The main difference is in the use of special equipment, which makes it possible to strongly distort its geometry during the production of a master disk.

Reliability is similar to the third. However, discs with this protection can be produced at several factories in the world where special equipment is installed.

And to this day, global solution providers in the field of optical media copy protection use the methods listed above.

door key

As already mentioned, the production technologies for all optical media (CD / DVD) are essentially the same, the difference is only in the thickness of the tracks. That is why the methods of copy protection for different types of disc are almost the same. Above, we described copy protection technologies for data discs (programs, games). The method of applying non-copy marks is also used in the protection of audio and video discs. However, copy protection methods for discs with music and movies are extremely unreliable and not very compatible. There is an ongoing debate around the legality of using copy protection for music and video. Many of the largest market players, such as Time Warner, AOL, Apple (iTunes service), have already abandoned the use of protection for their content. After all, a musician can make money from concert activities, films collect the lion's share of the proceeds from theaters. But as for games and programs, there is no tangible way to monetize income for a developer and publisher of software and games today, except for sales from store shelves, which makes the use of copy protection extremely necessary and profitable.

It should be noted that the CD is a delicate product. Its long-term use threatens to cause the media to fail due to constant physical impacts on the disk surface. If the disk is used heavily, then eventually the user may receive an inoperable "key" and, accordingly, will not start the program. Today, the industry is finding other ways to "tie" software. Internet activation is the easiest and most affordable way to implement. Instead of a "key-disk", a "key-serial number" is used, which is unique and identifies the program as a licensed one.

This review allowed us to draw an interesting conclusion - it turns out that most visitors to the site are not at all concerned with how to easily copy someone else's (in this case, the contents of a CD), but with how to protect themselves from such actions. Therefore, the second part of my review will be devoted to how to make a copy-protected disc on your own at home.

There are several programs that (even in the absence of the necessary skills) allow you to create your own copy-protected discs. For example, TZCopyprotection (current version 1.11), which works on a disk image created with CDRwin. This adds additional dummy tracks, and with the help of Nero, Easy CD Creator and CDRwin, such a disc cannot be copied 1:1. But, what is most offensive, by opening a CD using Windows Explorer, you can copy its contents to your hard drive without any problems. FreeLock (version 1.3) works in a similar way - you cannot create a disk image, but it's not a problem to tear off all the data from it.

I think that such a "protection" can hardly satisfy any of our readers, so let's go straight to the program with which we will work. This is CD Protector, the program is free, but at the same time quite effective. Version 4 has already been announced on the developers' site for a long time, but since there is no link to it, we will use CD Protector 3.0. It works with Nero (I tried to use it with Nero 5.0.0.9, 5.5.1.1 and 5.5.2.4), I can immediately upset fans of Easy CD Creator - the discs recorded with it are completely non-working. CD Protector is not universal in terms of protection - it protects an executable file, therefore it is suitable for those who distribute their programs on CD. True, self-extracting archives can also be protected, although this is not very convenient. But, for all its limitations, this is the only non-commercial program I know of that can actually make copying your own disc difficult.

After this short introduction, we will proceed directly to the consideration of the program. (I recommend using a CD-RW, which can be erased in case of failure).

1. For convenience, copy the files that you are going to include in the created disc into one folder.

2. Run CD Protector, in the File to encrypt field specify the location of your main executable file, for example, Setup.exe.

In the "Phantom Trax" directory field, specify the folder where the wav file will be saved, which will later be used when burning the CD (the location of this file on the hard drive does not matter, the main thing is that you do not forget where it will be saved).
In the Custom Message field, enter the text of the message that anyone who dares to try to copy your disc created with such difficulty will see. Feel free to express yourself.
(Note: it's a shame that this message is not always displayed).
In the Encryption Key field, enter any 2 characters from the keyboard, they do not matter (for some reason, you can not enter any letters when entering, for example, X cannot be entered).
Click ACCEPT! and wait until the process ends.

If everything went well and your exe file did not cause any objections from CD Protector (which sometimes happens), you can proceed to the next stage. By the way, if you open the folder into which you copied the files for the CD at the 1st stage, then You may notice some changes, namely: some files (_cdp16.dat, _CDP16.DLL, _cdp32.dat and CDP32.DLL) have been added to it, and the size of your exe file has changed.In addition, in the directory you specified for Phantom Trax file Track#1-Track#2 Cd Protector.wav appeared.
Now, by clicking Help, you can view all the instructions for further work with the disk, and if you are sure that everything is clear to you, you can not read the continuation of this article (although I recommend reading it to the end - help CD Protector "a, despite the apparent clarity contains some inaccuracies).

3. Start Nero (if you are using the Wizard, close it - this is not very convenient).

From the File menu, select New, in the New Compilation window that opens, select Audio-CD from the left vertical column, then set the following options:
In the Audio-CD section, uncheck the box next to Write CD-Text, and in the Burn section, be sure to turn off Finalize CD and Disc-At-Once:

Click New

4. Now use the File Browser to select the directory that you set for the Phantom Trax, find the Track#1-Track#2 CD Protector.wav file there and add it to the still empty Audio CD:

5. From the file menu, select Write CD, and in the write CD window that appears, open the CDA Options section and check Cache the Track on harddisk before burning and Remove silence at the end of *.cda tracks.

Now burn the audio track to a CD by pressing the Write CD button.

6. After a message that the burn was successful (Burnprocess done successfully), repeat step 5 (do not forget to check CDA Options - in Nero 5.0.0.9 they are permanently reset).

7. Click File>New, in the New Compilation window that opens, select CD-ROM (ISO) from the left vertical column, in the Multisession section, check Start Multisession disc, and in the Burn section, check that the Finalize CD option is disabled:

8. Add your files to an empty CD for now (the encoded exe file must be in the "root" of the disk), then from the File menu, select Write CD. After burning is complete, your protected CD is ready for use. If you now select the View Track item from the CD-Recorder menu, it will look something like this:

Now let's check whether our disk is considered write-protected by programs designed to find such protection and which we considered in the first part of the review. Copy Protection Detection will not detect any protection, but Clony will display the following message:

Now check the health of the disk and, if everything is fine, you can try to copy it using the methods known to you. CDRwin 3.8 will refuse to copy this disc, Nero 5.0.0.9 (even if Ignore Illegal TOC is installed) and Easy CD Creator 5.0 will simply hang.
If a self-extracting archive is protected in this way, then it is possible to access files from it by copying the contents of the CD to the hard drive. To do this, right-click the _cdp32.dat file, select "Open With" and try to set an archiver such as WinRAR as the program to open. If the archiver program supports this type of archive, then you can easily extract its contents. But, since no one except you knows about this trick, we will assume that the CD is reliably protected.

You can download CD Protector version 3.0 from the CD Media World website (section CD Protect Utilities), size - 2.01Mb. Perhaps the promised version 4.0 will soon appear on the website of the CD Protector developers.