Acustica Audio Framework 2023 READ NFO-R2R

This is runtime library required by Acustica Audio plugins.

They are just legit files with few insructions!

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!!! CAUTION !!!

Acustica Audio clearly states that they detect warez version in their Aquairus tool.

If you are legit user who wants to dive into the R2R-Acustica-World, uninstall them and sell them.

Otherwise, we don't recommend you to install R2R (and other) release.

No one can avoid the detection because developer can update the algorithm after the release appeared.

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OK, let's start the long NFO!

 Spoiler:

Before we start long technical notes, we should write about more
generic things about what people should have more interests.

[1] Advantage of R2R release.

This time, R2R didn't crack the software. We did far beyond that. We've
rebuilt the whole library which works without any protection.

* Library is not encrypted (RC4/Scorpion) at all.
* Library is not compressed, but it's still smaller than legit one.
* Library loading time is faster than legit version because of the
reasons above.

In some products with many files, our release is 90% smaller than legit
version This happens because every single library files have DLL file to
decrypt themselves. Even small 10KB file have about 3MB of decryption code
inside. These are completely removed in our rebuild library, because you
don't need it anymore :)

Simple and good enough!


[2] Does Acustica Audio plugins have strong protection?

Yes, for beginner crackers.
No, for experienced crackers.

Minimum required skill set:
* Know about DLL (if you can manually unpack DLL from UPX, that's enough)
* Crypto RC4/RSA
* Coding experience with Win32API

Legit license is required to make keygen (or perform decryption like R2R).


[3] How long did it take to crack?

It just took few hours from one witch to make one product working.
It took 1 week to realize the library rebuilding like these releases!

Anyway, there are many small differences in the protection between product A
and B. It took long time to do them all, but that's a fun part for witches :)


[4] Last R2R release (keygen) was in 2014. Why did it take so long?

* We didn't want to expose our crack to public until we can do them (almost)
* We were lazy to do all products. The amount of Acustica Audio products
had been increasing. That fact made witches more sloppy.

If we remember correctly, we already made 1st working crack in 2015 (it was
supplied with legit license). We know Acustica Audio is freaky worrying about
being cracked. We were sure that they will change the protection again if we
release another "art". That's why we have kept it internal for long time, and
never released 1 or 2 products since 2014.

Today, we finally decided to release them. There are over 100 products. No
regrets. We also think this release may change developer's mind and avoid
"protect more!" action from them :)


[5] Mac!!!!!

Our decrypted library is macOS compatible if you know how to! We are lazy
witches and we don't release 100+ products for macOS. Too time consuming.


[6] Hi developer!

Finally you need to change the mind, after you found that current protection
scheme does not work for R2R. You have serious misunderstanding about it.

* We showed we can reverse Virtual DLL trick and make valid keygen for RC4
Crypt for your products in 2014.
* We have shown that we can decrypt / unpack and emulate expensive
commercial protections, which should be obviously more advanced than your
homemade one.

We can't understand why you can believe in your super bloated multilayered
protection. With the 2 facts above, there are no doubt that we can easily
(at least should be much easier than paid protections) remove yours. As we
stated in the previous section, it didn't even take 1 day for us.

Customer (incl. potential customer) are not blind. Please think about how
they feel, once after we proved these protections are making your products
really fat and decreasing the performance - and R2R ones are far better. We
saw you are saying that "legit version is better because you can get updates!"
but these updates perform much worse than R2R release unless you change your
mind.

Instead of threatening your customer, do the right thing. Make a statement
that you will remove the shit and focus on the performance and quality.

We - R2R, customer, potential customer are watching you.

Don't let your customer selling your products and going to be R2Red.

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TECHNiCAL NOTE FOR MANiACS

Apart from the main license file scheme (contains key to decrypt library), we
will write about their unique bad protection.


[1] Understand Nebula Image

There are N2S, N2P, N2V files in Acustica Audio products. We call them Nebula
Image. They are file container like ISO and ZIP. It has file compression
support (algo : Google Snappy) and cryptography (RC4 / Scorpion). Scorpion is
custom DLL file made by Acustica, which performs another decryption.


[2] How Nebula Image Works

To use one Nebula Image file, program works like this:

1) Load Image file.
2) Decrypt TOC (File List) by RC4.
3) Get File List.
4) Get offset and RC4 encryption key of RC4 of FileA.
5) Load FileA to memory.
6) Decrypt FileA by RC4 using key acquired in (4).
7) Decompress FileA by GoogleSnappy.

Some files are more protected after (7).
8) Find SCORPIONX64n.dll in the file list.
9) Load SCORPIONX64n.dll to memory, DeRC4, DeSnappy.
10) Virtually load SCORPIONX64n.dll to memory.
11) Decrypt FileA by running the code inside SCORPIONX64n.dll.
License file is checked by SCORPION in this process.
12) There are 2nd SCORPION in the Image, do the same thing like 1st one.
13) Finaly FileA gets decrypted in the memory!

To make the things worse, SCORPION also Virtually load additional DLL which
is embedded in SCORPION.


[3] Bloating

As you can see, every Image files can have SCORPION inside. Since Acustica
Audio products have support for Win32, Win64, Mac32, Mac64, MacARM, there are
10 DLL files (because there are 2 SCORPIONs per platform) in 1 Nebula Image.

Of course, Nebula Image can have another Nebula Image in it.

This is how their Library gets bloated.

[4] R2R "Optimization"

In R2R rebuilt library, all RC4 and SCORPION are pre-decrypted, decompressed
from Google Snappy. As a result, we can also remove SCORPION DLL files from
Nebula Image (saves 3MB per Image). If there were 1000 files, it saves about
3GB. Some huge products actually have much more than 1000 files.

After R2Ring, Nebula Image works like this:

1) Load Image file.
2) Get TOC (File List).
3) Get offset of FileA.
4) Load FileA to memory.

Just 4 steps! Can we optimize more? It's just like plain ISO file :)

Since Image file in our release is already decrypted and decompressed, you
can see what files are included in the Image by just opening Image in your
favorite Hex Editor.

Because R2Red Image files are plain, you get additional good compression by
format compression at the final stage.


[5] Tricks Use by Acustica

* Virtual DLL - Basically, DLL is loaded by using Win32API LoadLibrary/Ex.
But it is possible to load DLL manually without using that API. Beginner
crackers only know the basic of DLL and debugger usage. By encrypting the
DLL and loading it virtually, beginner cracker cannot perform static
analysis and modify the file like other formal DLL files. Crackers with
solid knowledge can dump (extract) the DLL from the memory, or write the
code to patch the virtualized dll. Cherry Audio does same thing.

* SYSCALL - Acustica Audio scans ntdll.dll in the system32 dir, and calling
system function without using Win32API. This is used to avoid API-Hooking
by hackers. API-Hooking can be used to change some values to identify the
machine (used by generating challenge code). Acustica Audio tried to avoid
it. Some commercial protectors do this as an extra trick.

EOF