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Steely
I rise when the sun goes down
Premium Member
join:2000-10-15
Princeton Junction, NJ

Steely

Premium Member

Are Keygens safe?

Sure they're wrong, but...

For many years now, probably ever since I've had access to the Internet, I've been aware of the availability of "keygens" (little programs which circumvent payment of legitimate license fees for software by issuing dummy registration keys). I've always been skeptical of such executable files, but I have a friend who routinely goes to certain newsgroups to obtain his software in this manner. He gets all the major and expensive programs that way: MS Office, Norton Antivirus, Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, etc. He's very cavalier about it and is of the opinion that the people who make and distribute the keygens are looking to f**k the software developers, not the end users. Without getting into a discussion of ethics, is he right? I've always been intrigued by the supposed "Robinhood" mentality of the keygen developers (you know: steal from the rich and give to the poor). To me the Internet is a little like the old wild, wild west where you really can't trust anybody.

dadkins
Can you do Blu?
MVM
join:2003-09-26
Hercules, CA

dadkins

MVM

In general, most keygens are safe... that is, they will not "infect" your system.

The sites that carry/list thes keygens are a different story. Just loading some of these Crack Sites will see an attempted drive-by. Great places to test your real time security.

Some security applications do not like keygens and will rip them suckers out by the roots! PestPatrol Corp is one of these security apps that don't like them!

Be careful surfing the "Dark Side"(tell your friend), bad things can hit your computer there.

Don Pelotas
join:2004-12-10

Don Pelotas to Steely

Member

to Steely
Leaving the ethics aside, no he is not right, i can assure you if you download 10 keygens, you will get something extra, i speak from experience as i regularly peruse the underground for viruses.

Anyway if everybody did like your friend, then there would very quickly be nothing to download.

The "steal from the rich and give to the poor" is catchy, but leaving companies like Norton aside, there is also a number of very small vendors who are being hit much harder than Symantec by this stealing.:)
fict0n
join:2005-03-28
Rampart, AK

fict0n to Steely

Member

to Steely
I've seen a few unlockers/keygens create spam registry entries, but beyond that, I rarely find any malware outside of separate files packaged with the keygen that you can execute separately using your own discretion.

You may want to use User Rights tweaks just to be sure, and always scan with a heavyweight like KAV (keygen not necessary with 6.0 beta). At least, this is what I do, and KAV has almost always reported them clean.

I recommend a freeware Windows hardener, Secure-It »www.sniff-em.com/secureit.shtml for the User Rights tweak. It adds 4 levels of execution to any executable file, so that you can just open the keygen as Guest, have it generate, without being able to change the registry, create files, etc.

The dangers of piracy are largely overblown if you know what's dangerous and what's not. Pages where you find the keygens embedded with malware are much more popular than keygens embedded with malware.

ethics smethics
@uni-mb.si

ethics smethics to Steely

Anon

to Steely
I would run the keygen by both Jotti and VirusTotal.

»virusscan.jotti.org/
»www.virustotal.com

montana3087
Say hello to my little friend
Premium Member
join:2001-05-03
Denver, CO

montana3087 to Steely

Premium Member

to Steely
I don't know about the malware part, but they can screw-up your system though, so user beware is all I can say.