- The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is uNITED cRACKING fORCE.
The uNITED cRACKING fORCE (uCF), also known as uCF2000, is a warez group specializing in the removal of copy protection from software programs. Established in February 1994, by its founder mARQUIS dE sOIRE, it was run by him until he left the group in October 1998. The group continued on under different leadership and celebrated their 10th year in operation in 2004.
Member Roles
Although uCF does not make a practice of publishing their member list, several members have attained a "Hall of Fame" status within the group, including: Misha, ED!SON, DjPaul, Sage, Lost Soul, M. Musashi, Solar Designer, Jammer, Acpizer, mARQUIS dE sOIRE, j0b, TwinHead, The Riddler, Random, Bunter, LordByte, xOANON, and Quantico.
According to NFO files from 1998 the group consisted of four sub groups:
- Founder: mARQUIS dE sOIRE
- President: Lordbyte
- Vice President: Xoanon
- Head Cracker: G-RoM
- Co-Head Cracker: Lorian
- Member Coordinator: t00nie
- Public Relations Director: netking
- BunteR, |Jake|, RegoR, Stone, Dark Stalker, Hendrix, SHamPster, _Shaman
- RyDeR_H00k!, foSSiL, Sun-Tzu`, Nobody, Quantico, tHeRain, Sp0t, _MuFFiN_
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- CyberJak, Avatar, ph0nejack, Alkivar
Release History
| u C F releases by year
|
| January – December 1994
| ? cracks*
|
| January – December 1995
| ? cracks*
|
| January – December 1996
| ? cracks*
|
| January – December 1997
| 603 cracks
|
| January – December 1998
| 628 cracks
|
| January – December 1999
| 534 cracks
|
| January – December 2000
| 826 cracks
|
| January – October 2001
| 536 cracks*
|
| January – September 2002
| 573 cracks*
|
| January – June 2003
| 599 cracks*
|
| January – May 2004
| 629 cracks*
|
| January – December 2005
| ? cracks*
|
| Lifetime total:
| 4,928 cracks*
|
| * Total is currently incomplete
|
A prolific group, uCF released many cracks in the mid-to-late 1990s and early-to-mid 2000s, ranging from software titles such as the Opera Web Browser to Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge to Adobe's Image Ready to Citrix MetaFrame. However uCF did not merely crack software. As was often the case, they wrote key generation algorithms to allow users to fool the programs into thinking they were legally registered.
Key generation is much more difficult for software firms to counter. Rather than simply blacklisting a single serial number, a Keygen forced the software company to spend time and money creating an entirely new serial number verification system. A notable example of this was the shift from Microsoft's XXX-XXXXXXX numeric format (due to widespread piracy) for serials in Windows 95 and Windows 98 to the more complicated XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX alphanumeric serial format for software released post-Windows 98.
In some cases the debugging tools (such as SoftICE) used to break the software protection was inadequate to the task, or even intentionally broken by the copy prevention technique (some applications checked for and caused a system halt if SoftICE was found running); in these cases uCF members often relied upon tools they themselves created to analyze the underlying code – one of these products was ProcDump32.
uCF claims to have been the first group to break a dongle protection scheme. This claim is widely debated among software crackers and other warez group members (especially on EFnet). Other cracking groups to claim this credit are Phrozen Crew, C0RE, and TNO – although the ones with the most plausible counter claim are Phrozen Crew (which was created around the same time as uCF).
uCF has also on occasion broken an entire company's copy protection system – FLEXlm (http://www.macrovision.com/products/legacy_products/flexlm/index.shtml) (no longer supported) & VBox (now extinct) were two notable examples. These cracks in particular caused widespread panic among their respective creators who's entire income was based on marketing these protection systems, and lead to their eventual demise. GLOBEtrotter Software, Inc. manufacturers of FLEXlm went out of business and were purchased by Macrovision. Preview Systems makers of VBox went out of business and were purchased by Aladdin Knowledge Systems. These bankruptcies were due in part to the effect uCF's removal kits had upon their bottom lines.
In print
- PC World December 1999. Alt.net column Cracking Up by Scott Mendham – article is about cracking scene in general, uCF is mentioned.
External links
- Heise article (http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/1/1358/1.html) by John Horvath (1997) about the impact of software piracy in Central and Eastern Europe, specifically citing uCF.
- UCF_96.NFO (http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/NFO/ucf_96.nfo) a copy of an NFO from the release of Terminate Keymaker v4.0 in (April 1996).
- ProcDump32 v1.6.2 (http://protools.reverse-engineering.net/unpackers.htm) by G-RoM, Lorian and Stone (January 18 2000).
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