About 5–10 years ago, in order to purchase a licensed program or game, it was necessary to look for original discs. This, in turn, was rather difficult, because the market was filled with substandard pirated products. With the spread of the Internet, everything has changed for the better. Now, to download licensed software, you just need to purchase a special key and enter it on the official website. After that, the system will perform an online key check and give you the opportunity to download software.
Despite the availability of licensed software, many users still refuse to pay for it. Internet users use various programs designed to bypass the security system. One of these programs is keygen. What is it and what are the principles of its work? You can learn about all this by reading this article.
Legality
But before talking about the principles of keygen, it is worth considering the legal side of the issue. Since keygens can be classified as hacking programs, their use is illegal. There are several copyright laws that prohibit circumvention of technical remedies. In the United States of America, this law has existed since 1998 (described in the "Copyright Act in the Digital Age"), and in Russia a similar decree appeared in 2008 (documented in the Civil Code of the Russian Federation).
Now let's talk more about the type of programs called keygen. What is it, how do they work, and what are they used for. You can find answers to these and other questions in this article.
Keygen: what is it?
Now there are a lot of computer terms that are sometimes very difficult to understand. One such term is keygen. "What is it, where to download it, how does it work?" - Similar questions are often asked by users. This article is intended to answer them. Want to learn more about programs to bypass copyright protection? Then this article is for you!
"Keygen" (short for English key generator, which translates as "key generator") are special programs that are able to create cryptographic keys for encrypting data. But most often keygens are used in order to generate pseudo-authentic keys for activating licensed games, antiviruses and other software.
Work principles
In order to understand how keygens work, it is necessary to consider in more detail the key activation process. Typically, the code is entered directly during installation. The installer (installer) uses special algebraic computation in order to verify its authenticity. For example, take a key that contains 5 numbers and 3 letters. First, the algorithm must determine the correctness of the entered numbers. To do this, the installer adds numbers. The sum of these 5 numbers should be equal to the value indicated in the algorithm. With letters everything is exactly the same. Letters have their numerical equivalents. The algorithm translates letters into numbers, then adds them up and checks for authenticity.
At first glance, this system seems impregnable, like a medieval castle. But this is not so. Learning the installer algorithm is very easy. This is what crackers use (people who crack security systems). Using special programs called disassemblers, they scan the source code of the installer. Having accessed the source code, the cracker finds a function responsible for verifying the authenticity of the entered key. Having learned by what principle the function works, a cracker can write an algorithm that will pick up working keys without any problems.
Keygens in the modern world
Keygens used to be very often used to bypass the defense system. Just recall the company Alawar, which suffered huge losses due to the fact that most users used keygens. Now the situation has completely changed. Key generators are not as relevant as they were before. The reason is that now activation codes are checked via the Internet and are tied to user accounts.
Keygen for games
Nobody wants to spend their hard-earned money on games. Because of this, many users are looking for a key generator for games from Steam and Origin. But they are forced to disappoint: such keygens do not exist. The fact is that these services bind keys to accounts, it is for this reason that it will not work twice to activate the codes. Also, for each game, Steam and Origin have their own function, which will not be solved due to the closed program code.
If you managed to find a keygen for Steam or Origin - do not rejoice. Most likely, this is a hoax, and the so-called keygen is a regular styler or a virus that will intercept your data. As a result of this, you can lose not only the Steam - or Orejdin account, but also your page on social networks. In order to protect yourself from this, just do not download files from unverified and suspicious resources.