StarForce

For the video game, see Star Force.

StarForce is a controversial software copy prevention brand by the Russian developer Protection Technology. Its various implementations are compatible with different versions of the Microsoft Windows operating systems. Its main strength lies in wrapping executable and DLL files using byte-code, interpreted through its own virtual machine. StarForce is said to be very difficult to reverse engineer, however games using the protection-scheme have still been copied and cracked. The difficulty of making a crack is highly dependent on which StarForce product has been implemented and how many times the protection scheme is used within the game executable.

Protection strategies

StarForce is believed to operate by measuring the physical angle between the first and last written sector on the CD. This hardware signature is identical on all copies pressed from the gold master but is currently difficult to reproduce when burning a duplicate CD.

StarForce also blocks the use of SCSI optical drives when IDE optical drives are present in the system, since most optical drive emulators currently work by simulating SCSI drives. StarForce, however, will authenticate discs from a SCSI optical disc drive if there are no IDE optical disc drives installed in the system; a weak point, since a system with the IDE optical drives unplugged can run the protected program from a mounted CD or DVD image.

StarForce family of products

Currently known official designations of StarForce include:

• "StarForce Pro 3": Requires a "disk key" to be entered when the software is installed. This key is the same for all copies of the game, as it encodes the nature of the protection scheme as present on the master; this disk key is different from -- and thus should not be mistaken with -- the "Serial Number" which games traditionally use for online gameplay.

• "StarForce Keyless": Added optional feature of StarForce 3.x PRO. No disk key is required to be entered, since it is stored on the disk. (See the official whitepaper [1].)

• "StarForce Pro 3.7": Added support for 64-bit systems. StarForce-protected software that works on 64-bit Windows can be identified by the presence of a .x64 file in the software's install directory.

Reputation

As mentioned earlier, StarForce has a reputation of being extremely difficult to reverse engineer. However a lot of the StarForce protected games still have been cracked or have other methods in order to run copies, although usually a crack is quite after the release of the game due to the time consuming nature of reverse engineering StarForce.

StarForce has received criticism for installing its own device driver onto computers. The StarForce driver, which is installed along with the protected product, is mostly not uninstalled along with the software and cannot be uninstalled using conventional methods, i.e. a Start Menu shortcut or Add/Remove Programs applet in the Windows Control Panel (However, some protected products [e.g. Peter Jackson's King Kong] will offer to uninstall the StarForce drivers with their uninstallation). However StarForce developers have later published a removal tool to help untrained users remove the driver (Download link is provided below). When games started to include StarForce 4.0 and above in their protection scheme, it had been updated to remove itself from the computer after the game is uninstalled.

In addition, the StarForce drivers are often linked to system instability and computer crashes. Some users claim that the StarForce drivers can cause optical drives to fail, but StarForce claims there is no definite proof of this. StarForce believes that the stability problems were exaggerated and have been resolved in newer versions of the product. See "External Links" and "News Coverage" sections below.

CDV, Ubisoft, Digital Jesters, JoWooD and Codemasters have used StarForce on some of their products. However, Ubisoft and JoWood have announced that the North American version of their games will no longer use StarForce, citing user complaints as the reason [2]. CDV also announced that they were dropping Starforce for all future games in May 2006 in favor of the TAGES copy prevention system, citing customer complaints as the reason. [3]

A group of gamers have advocated boycotts of games or publishers known to use StarForce, despite there being no definite proof that Starforce causes any harm to computers. Ubisoft decided to investigate the extent of the StarForce boycott and ran a poll on their forums, the outcome of which was against the use of StarForce [4]. For example, in Heroes of Might and Magic V StarForce was replaced by SecuROM.

Controversy

On 30th January 2006 Boing Boing, a popular weblog, labeled StarForce as malware, alleging several problems associated with the protection system, including disk drive performance degradation, weakening of operating system security and stability. A day later on 31 January 2006 Boing Boing received an email from StarForce, threatening legal action and stating that the article was "full of insults, lies, false accusations and rumors". CNET also ran a similar story, and has received similar email. However, Protection Technologies has never proven these claims are false.

StarForce (all version known until August 2006) creates a real security problem when installed. The access control list of the drivers are set such that any user, including those without administrative rights, are allowed to change the association with the executable. Exploitation is simple: The user changes it to point at any arbitrarily chosen executeable, which is executed with full system privileges on next reboot. This can be verified with the security tool "srvcheck2", which detects such potentially insecure driver configurations.

On 5th March 2006, a StarForce employee posted a link [5] to an illegal download source of Galactic Civilizations 2, a game developed by StarDock which does not use mandatory copy protection. StarForce later issued an apology for this act [6], after it received a great deal of attention on the Internet.

On 24th March 2006, Christopher Spence filed a class complaint on behalf of himself and other gamers against Ubisoft. As a result of that complaint Ubisoft dropped Starforce.

See also

• PELock
• SecuROM
• SafeDisc
• XCP

External links

• Official site
• StarForce Drivers Removal Tool
• A boycott website with its list of Starforce protected games and detection methods
• A list of games using StarForce (outdated)

News coverage

• "StarForce Interview and Piracy Discussion": interview with Abbie Sommer of StarForce (FiringSquad, August 18, 2004)
• "Irritation-Ware: Copy protection with a mean streak", (Broadbandreports, July 12, 2004)
• "StarForce Copy Protection Causing User Ire" (Slashdot, June 11, 2004)
• The War on Game Pirates
• Boing Boing's article alleging StarForce is malware (31 January 2006); StarForce's response
• CNET article regarding StarForce. StarForce response.
• "Opinion: The Problem with Protection" PC Gamer editor-in-chief Greg Vederman talks about his problems with StarForce
• Starforce enforces DRM by instant reboot (without warning)
• Computer Gaming World reports that under certain circumstances, StarForce will cause Windows to access optical drives in Programmed input/output (PIO) mode.