Looking for old SecuROM citations?

[shadowcat]

Hi, were there any gaming, hacker or news articles about SecuROM itself between 1998-1999? (the era of SecuROM 1-2) - Trying to find one that gives me a clear idea when SecuROM 2 was invented (tagged it as Populous 3 for now).


One I'm specially looking for is a possibly bad memory that Populous: The Beginning (late 1998'ish) had some bad mastering copies that were recalled. It would be several weeks before Christmas when the rumour circulated about protection being broken.

If there were any articles about Forsaken having copy protection, that would be of interest also. Europe and Italy have some unusual SecuROM remnant discs.


Were there any Educational software protected by SecuROM from 1998-1999? Encyclopedias, Atlases, Scholastic-type?

Did Sony DADC publish any documents or websites about discs only having physical copy protection (but not wrapped exe)? They appeared to paywall extra features later on.


And would anyone know of SecuROM 1 titles between 1998-02 and 1998-04?
- Frankreich / World Cup 98 (late April) (Germany / Italy)
- Incoming (late April) (Germany)

- Forsaken (early May) (Germany)
- Lego Island (early May) (Italy only)

- Hexplore (mid-May) (Germany)

- Heart of Darkness (late May = too late, version bump)


I don't think there are any findable answers to the above, but I'd like to ask as this community is helpful.
(I will mention Legends World + Internet Archive + Redump Disc Preservation Project in my documents later)

[shadowcat]

This research paper covers all major DRMs from 1980s to today
https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle ... _final.pdf


Reading about Denuvo was interesting. But it says that SecuROM was released in 1997 ... I had it unofficially around 1998-02 at the known earliest I could find.
- Laxity (German hacker) knew about Forsaken / Incoming / Hexplore / Frankreich 98 (Germany region).
- Wonder where this 1997 citation comes from ??


I have yet to confirm that Omnia 99 / Omnia 99 Atlante are both SecuROM but non-entertainment (Italy).


And it looked like Sony DADC put their cms driver fingerprints on any software disc they mastered, but before SecuROM NEW (~2.5 or 2.75).

[Sparkos168]

What's the first-ever game protected by SecuROM?

[Scaryfun]

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
According to this - https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-very- ... by-SecuROM

[shadowcat]

Red Alert 2 = October 23, 2000. That was SafeDisc 2.05
http://redump.org/disc/31773/


Oldest ones I know of are:

1.00 = protection drivers never worked, April 1998-ish
- Forsaken (Europe)
- Forsaken (Italy)
- Heart of Darkness (Germany)

1.01 = first known working
- Incoming (Germany)
- Frankreich 98: Die Fußball-WM (Germany)

1.02 = started encrypting debug strings
- Forsaken (Germany)
- Hexplore (Europe)
- Lego Island (Italy)

1.03 = driver protection via hashes, lots more encryption
- Heart of Darkness (Europe, Germany, France)

1.04 = bugfix (works on any CDROM drive), 3 layers of encryption obfuscation
- Conflict: FreeSpace (Europe RC0, Germany RC1, France RC1)

1.05 = Petite 1.2 packing
- Heart of Darkness (USA RC1)

1.06
- Heart of Darkness (Europe RC1)

1.07
- Need for Speed III (Europe UK - SP - SW / Europe FR - GE - IT)

1.08
- F.A. Premier League Football Manager 99
- Heart of Darkness (Spain)

1.x
- Might and Magic VI (Italy)

-- They did some major reorganizing so easier to tag as 2.x series --

2.00 = import protection I think
- Populous: The Beginning (Europe, Italy)

2.01 = Petite 1.3
- FIFA 99 (Germany, Europe, Italy)

2.02
- Wargasm (Europe)

2.03
- Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

2.04
- Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (Usa)

2.x
- South Park
- Re-Volt

--- At some point, they started numbering their drivers ---

2.75
- Shadow Man (Italy)

2.92
- Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (Italy)


Note that most version #s are unofficial and likely not accurate. Just from monitoring SecuRom drivers and how they evolved.

Haven't worked on this list for awhile now. Other protections became a priority and uhm, I honestly forgot how most of this works. Even back then, the low-level stuff is pretty gory for non-experts.