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 of 1994 by mARQUIS dE sOIR�E, although the groups first release was not until April 1994. uCF was run by mARQUIS until he left the group in October 1998. The group continued on under different leadership and celebrated their 10th year in operation in 2004. As of 2005 uCF is still active and releasing.

Contents

1 Release History 2 Member Roles 2.1 Administration 2.2 Crackers 2.3 IRC Channel Coordinators 2.4 Packaging and Distribution 3 In print 4 External links

Release History

u C F releases by year
April – December 1994	63 cracks
January – December 1995	163 cracks
January – July 1996	272 cracks*
January – December 1997	603 cracks
January – December 1998	628 cracks
January – December 1999	534 cracks
January – December 2000	857 cracks
January – October 2001	536 cracks*
January – September 2002	573 cracks*
January – June 2003	599 cracks*
January – May 2004	629 cracks*
January – December 2005	xxx cracks*
Lifetime total:	5,457 cracks*
* indicates incomplete total

A prolific group, uCF released many cracks from the mid-to-late 1990s continuing until the present day, ranging from software titles such as the Opera Web Browser to Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge to Adobe's Image Ready to Citrix MetaFrame (a more complete list can be found here). However uCF did not merely crack software. As was often the case, they wrote key generation algorithms to allow users to create their own seemingly valid serial numbers 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 for serials in Windows 95 due to widespread piracy to the more complicated XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX alphanumeric serial format for software released from Windows 98 onwards. When that format was broken, Microsoft again changed its system to an even more complex system requiring product activation for the release of Windows XP, Office XP and newer products.

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 [1] (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.

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 sOIR�E, j0b, TwinHead, The Riddler, Random, Bunter, LordByte, xOANON, and Quantico.

According to NFO files from 1998 the group consisted of four departments:

Administration

• Founder: mARQUIS dE sOIR�E
• President: Lordbyte
• Vice President: Xoanon
• Head Cracker: G-RoM
• Co-Head Cracker: Lorian
• Member Coordinator: t00nie
• Public Relations Director: netking

Crackers

• BunteR, |Jake|, RegoR, Stone, Dark Stalker, Hendrix, SHamPster, _Shaman
• RyDeR_H00k!, foSSiL, Sun-Tzu`, Nobody, Quantico, tHeRain, Sp0t, _MuFFiN_

IRC Channel Coordinators

• Scamp, Fryguy, FanTomE

Packaging and Distribution

• CyberJak, Avatar, ph0nejack, Alkivar

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

• The Levelling Effect - Telepolis (Heise) article by John Horvath (1997) about the impact of software piracy in Central and Eastern Europe, specifically citing uCF.
• Reality Check Network Issue #22 - Contains an interview with Founder mARQUIS and Cracker Misha
• UCF_96.NFO - A copy of an NFO from the release of Terminate Keymaker v4.0 in (April 1996).
• ProcDump32 v1.6.2 - by G-RoM, Lorian and Stone (January 18 2000).