Denuvo

src: geeksultd.com

Denuvo Anti-Tamper, or Denuvo, is an anti-tamper technology and digital rights management (DRM) scheme developed by the Austrian company Denuvo Software Solutions GmbH, a company formed through the management buyout (MBO) of Sony DADC DigitalWorks.

Video Denuvo

History

The first Denuvo-protected game was released in September 2014. Early reports suggested that Denuvo Anti-Tamper "continuously encrypts and decrypts itself so that it is impossible to crack." Denuvo Software Solutions has stated that the technology "does not continuously encrypt and decrypt any data on storage media. To do so would be of no benefit in terms of security or performance." The company has not revealed how Denuvo Anti-Tamper works. Games protected by Denuvo require an online re-activation for every hardware change every 24 hours and Denuvo limits activations to four hardware upgrades per 24 hours. Denuvo's marketing director Thomas Goebl stated that some console-only releases get PC releases due to this technology.

In December 2014, the Chinese warez group 3DM claimed to have defeated Denuvo and later that month released a software crack for the video game Dragon Age: Inquisition, which uses the Denuvo anti-tamper technology to protect Electronic Arts' Origin Online Access DRM. The group claimed that the technology involves a "64-bit encryption machine" that requires cryptographic keys unique to the specific hardware of each installed system. However, the 3DM crack arrived almost a month after the game's release in November 2014, an unusually long time for PC games which were normally cracked on the same day as release. Asked about the development, Denuvo acknowledged that "every protected game eventually gets cracked" and Ars Technica noted that most sales for major games happened within 30 days of release, and so publishers may consider Denuvo a success if it meant a game took significantly longer to be cracked. 3DM continued to release cracks for Denuvo-protected games throughout 2015.

3DM reportedly nearly gave up attempting to crack Just Cause 3, which is protected with Denuvo, in January 2016 due to difficulties with an upgraded version of the anti-tamper mechanism. They also warned that due to the current trends in encryption technology, the cracking of video games may become impossible within two years. 3DM announced they would stop all research on Denuvo Anti-Tamper, stop cracking all single-player games from February 2016 for one whole year, start relying on other crackers and see if the sales have increased in China in one year's time.

In August 2016, it was reported that the Denuvo protection found in Doom had been bypassed by a cracker named Voksi. Bypasses for many other Denuvo-protected games were released the following days. Although the exploit used for these bypasses was patched 3 days after the first bypass was released, news followed that Rise of the Tomb Raider, Inside and Doom had been fully cracked by the scene group CONSPIR4CY (CPY) by successfully emulating the enhanced "v3" anti-tamper implementation and patching the remaining in-game triggers. Playdead later removed Denuvo from their game Inside in their later patches. id Software removed Denuvo from their 2016 release Doom via a patch in December later that year. Crytek later removed Denuvo from their VR game The Climb. CPY continues to crack Denuvo in other games.

A few months later, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was cracked only five days after its release, making it the fastest game to be cracked with the latest Denuvo implementation at the time. In May 2017, Russian cracker BALDMAN cracked two games protected by the then-latest "v4" version of Denuvo: Nier: Automata and Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3. On June 4, MKDEV cracked Constructor HD, (although the release was unstable and later properly cracked by CPY.) On June 6, BALDMAN cracked Tekken 7, just four days after release, despite shipping with the then-latest "v4++" implementation of Denuvo. In June 2017, anonymous scene group STEAMPUNKS released Dishonored 2 with an offline Denuvo license generator. They later released Adr1ft and Planet Coaster with similar generators. The keygens released by STEAMPUNKS are allegedly packed by VMProtect, which is reportedly also used by Denuvo itself in some iterations. STEAMPUNKS released working license generators for most uncracked games with the v3 implementation of Denuvo. Starting in September 2017, Denuvo protection on new games was being cracked within hours of release.

Maps Denuvo

Controversy

Some consumers have alleged that Denuvo Anti-Tamper shortens the lifetime of solid-state drives (SSDs) by writing an excessive amount of data to the drive. Denuvo Software Solutions claims that "Denuvo Anti-Tamper does not constantly read or write any data to storage media," calling it a "wrong rumor", since it doesn't perform read or write operations. Games with Denuvo Anti-Tamper state in EULA that "certain files of the anti-tamper technology may remain even after the product is uninstalled from your computer."