oh yeah i know i'm an experience cracker myself so
it would prob taking patching one jump in OllyDBG lol
i knew if someone wanted to crack it they would..
although if you look at the code patching that API call would make the check fail..
if it couldn't get the volume id then the activation check would not succeed.
i didn't mention it earlier but people had to send me their hashed volume id and then i would email them a key.
reversing the hash system would require knowing your own volume id etc.
the easier way to crack it would be patch the checks on whether it's activated.. the bool variable.
when i used the variable i wrapped protected functions around whether the beta enabled bool was set true or false.
so the most vulnerable aspect of all this was simply patching those check and not the activation system itself.
for example i have for years been cracking Tag & Rename and Valve's steam and many other app's for many years and i don't go after their algo's
i simply wait until the algo is done and attack the variable etc that stores the result of what the algo was checking for.. see what i mean ?
In Steam for example all i did so many years ago was set a register and return.. wrote 3 lines of asm that defeated the protection.
and on Tag & rename it has always been as easy as patching a couple jumps and running the program.. no key needs to be entered its just regged an launch.
What i did for my firewall where i reversed all the parts where it hashed and encrypted stuff and then keygenned it by recreating what the hashing etc was doing
is pretty rare.. i wouldn't usually bother going to that much trouble when a simple quick one or two line patch kills all the protection crap.
and i DID do that too on the firewall.. and it REALLY REAAAALY pissed the dev off big time when i laughed at him and posted screenshots of how i did it to him publicly on a forum
he flipped out and said it was not need to post them and i was a jerk etc for posting and i said buddy.. you just called me a liar and said i couldn't patch it so i proved it LOL
and he figured i coudln't because his program was coded in c sharp .net ..and yeah i can patch that easily lol
This is the exact picture i posted to the firewall dev that pissed him right off lol
anyway i think your saying "Server side protection" ..
and when you shared your miner way back i considered trying to crack / patch it.. i am not sure what you did is secure.
Valve uses some advanced server side protection systems that are exploited and yours i got the impression was rather weak compared to many out there.
Want me to try and crack your program ? lol