The Downward Spiral

this is just for PDFs… cuz they are seriously really easy to rip outta there… but similar crap could be done for whatever kinda code you are lookin for…

#!/usr/bin/perl

@lines = <STDIN>;

$foundpdf = 0;
foreach $line (@lines) {
        $foundpdf = 1 if($line =~ /%PDF/);
        print "%PDF-1.6\n" if($line =~ /%PDF/);
        next if($line =~ /%PDF/);
        next if($foundpdf == 0);
        print $line;
}

….. yep… delete everything up until “%PDF” and then save it to a .PDF file and you are done. I was trying to do it in fewer lines, but got tired of messing with it.

So.. for the mentally handicapped… get yourself a Linux machine, save that above in a file (”break_virtual_vault.pl” for example), and run:

cat my_protected_pdf.exe | perl break_virtual_vault.pl > mypdf.pdf

And you get an unprotected PDF… completely bypassing Shawn’s Pringle’s amazing “bullet proof” DRM. Seriously. I think I’m gonna go shit now it’s so amazing.

Also, Shawn, if you are only going to protect the people that don’t want to break in to the files, then what good is protecting them? I don’t get a car alarm to keep away parapalegics. And this is not super hacking. I’m treating a binary file as a text file… not usually very fruitful. I used VI and Perl to break your DRM… seriously.. I’m not a super hacker here.

But I know that you need stay outta the security industry… you don’t know what you are doing… you are selling lies and making money off it… and that’s sick man.

More CB Protect stuff… from my buddy to them….

I believe I have finally completely broken the Virtual Vault protection scheme. By poking around today and looking at the contents of the .exe file generated by the Virtual Vault, I came across what looked to be a PDF header block around line 3397. This file header was surprisingly followed by the entire unencrypted contents of the original PDF file which was locked in the vault.

This continued all the way to the end of the .exe file, where the %%EOF marker was followed by one additional line apparently added by the Virtual Vault.

By removing the first 3397 lines (though that seems to vary from file to file) and the last line, I was left with a file that exactly matched the original unlocked PDF. I was able to then save it with whatever name I chose, open it in Adobe Acrobat, share it, whatever I pleased.

All this was done, this time, WITHOUT a code from Virtual Vault. Previously I was only able to get the unlocked contents after I had opened the file with a valid code. Now I believe that is no longer necessary. In fact, if I wanted, I could now write a utility to extract the unlocked contents automatically and undetected from the Virtual Vault service.

Is this a known issue?