This is decidedly not what I’d expect to be discussed at Thotcon. That said, super interesting!
As an avid pirate, I’ll say these days even the Denuvo game which were going years without cracks now have “cracks”, although they rely on hypervisor fixes and disabling secure boot and giving the hypervisor cracks unfettered access to your system to intercept the Denuvo checks. [0] It’s a dangerous game we’re playing to keep these AAA games bottom lines fat.
threat model is people who cheat in games. obfuscation slows them down, but does not offer complete protection and incurs a performance cost. this work is focused on reducing the performance cost.
This is decidedly not what I’d expect to be discussed at Thotcon. That said, super interesting!
As an avid pirate, I’ll say these days even the Denuvo game which were going years without cracks now have “cracks”, although they rely on hypervisor fixes and disabling secure boot and giving the hypervisor cracks unfettered access to your system to intercept the Denuvo checks. [0] It’s a dangerous game we’re playing to keep these AAA games bottom lines fat.
[0] https://www.thefpsreview.com/2026/04/03/denuvo-has-been-brok...
Link to the slides (almost missed it when i was reading): https://farzon.org/files/presentations/Thotcon_talk_may_2025...
Which provides way more information than the article
oh fascinating. i just finished reverse engineering Aegis and now working on their newest Eidolon. pretty cool technology.
> While security researchers love the entropy of randomized function layouts
I don't think any competent security researcher has anything positive to say about "security through obscurity"
at best this is lawyer position
It’s not about security, it’s about wasting a crackers time.
Some people find cracking them interesting and fun.
Echoing the other comments here - why? What is the threat model here and how does this protect you from it?
threat model is people who cheat in games. obfuscation slows them down, but does not offer complete protection and incurs a performance cost. this work is focused on reducing the performance cost.
- from the slides
What is the fps hit?
why bother?