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StarForce

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For the video game, see Star Force.

StarForce is a software copy prevention brand by the Russian developer Protection Technology, who licensed it from CD-Cops. Its various implementations are compatible with some 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 believed to operate by measuring the physical angle between the first and last written sector on the CD. This is identical on all copies pressed from the gold master but is at present difficult to reproduce when burning a duplicate CD.

In addition to this, StarForce, along with very recent versions of the SafeDisc and SecuROM copy prevention systems, use blacklists of optical drive emulation programs such as Daemon Tools and Alcohol 120% (at the time of writing StarForce cannot detect these programs), as well as blocking the use of SCSI optical drives when IDE optical drives are also present in the system. The latter measure is due to optical drive emulation programs simulating SCSI drives. SCSI drives will function normally without interference from StarForce if no IDE drives are present.

Many consider StarForce to be very difficult to reverse engineer; games protected by it can be cloned, but sometimes are not cracked. According to StarForce developers, they monitor newly released StarForce cracks, and regularly release updates to fix recently discovered flaws.[1].

StarForce Family Of Products

Currently known versions of StarForce include the following:

  • "StarForce Pro 3" (official designation): Requires a "disk key" to be entered when the game 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; thus most games use a traditional "CD key" as well for online play. (Present on Trackmania, Chaos League, Etherlords 2 ,Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones)
  • "StarForce Pro 3.7" (official designation): Fully supports 64-bit systems, unlike the older versions.

Ubisoft, Digital Jesters, Codemasters, and Egosoft are known to use StarForce on newly released software.

Criticism

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StarForce has received criticism for installing its own device driver onto computers. Some users claim that the StarForce drivers can cause optical drives to fail, which has been investigated by the popular American magazine CGW [2]. CGW states that under certain circumstances StarForce will cause Windows to access optical drives in Programmed input/output mode which causes the drive to be accessed far more slowly, potentially causing problems. StarForce developers responded to these findings, stating "The issue on StarForce is obviously sponsored by our competitors or organized crime groups that run CD/DVD piracy operations. We are now in close cooperation with US and Russian officials investigating the matter and trying to find out who stands behind the boycott campaign". When faced with criticism on the internet, StarForce officials are known to threaten with legal action and contact with the FBI, though the extent to which these threats have been pursued remain doubtful. StarForce's developers claim that their EULA absolves them from any responsibility for problems that their software may cause [3]. Supporters of StarForce argue that the stability problems were exaggerated and have been resolved in newer versions of StarForce.

StarForce copy protection software also forces users to completely wipe and reinstall their partitions if they wish to remove the copy protection software. The protection will also write to any shared network drives that have full read / write access, causing problems for other users on the network.

A large number of gamers have advocated boycotts of games or publishers known to use StarForce. On 30th January 2006 Boing Boing, a popular weblog, labelled 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 have never proven these claims are false.

On 5th March 2006, a StarForce employee posted a link [4] to an illegal download source of Galactic Civilizations 2, a game developed by StarDock which does not use copy protection. Starforce later issued an apology for this act [5], after it received a great deal of attention on the internet.

Effectiveness

StarForce's developers and supporters point to the absence of 'cracks' for StarForce games when defending its effectiveness. Critics state that the protection system only protects against casual copying. StarForce protected games are commonly distributed inside the 'scene' as Clonecd copies with the protection system intact. The protection can be usually bypassed by disabling IDE devices or through the use of a program such as StarForce Nightmare or StarF*ck Tools.

Problems

A current problem is that software protected with older versions of StarForce will not operate on machines using 64-bit Windows, since the StarForce device driver is 32-bit; thus the OS will not allow it to install. Although Protection Technology has produced a 64-bit version of the driver, it is not possible to use this driver with software protected using the original 32-bit only version; thus, a patch from the developer of the protected software is also required and so far few developers have provided such patches. StarForce protected software that will work on 64-bit Windows can be identified by the presence of a .x64 file in the software's install directory. Additionally, upon starting the game, StarForce will sometimes take several minutes to verify the game disc. This behavior is sporadic, and may go through phases where it is unable to verify the disc, only to open correctly the next time the program is run. Another problem with Starforce is that it grants ring-0 access, which can allow trojans and other malware into the system on which it is installed. Because of these problems, some gamers have boycotted StarForce protected games. 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.

See also

News coverage

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