Denuvo’s notorious anti-piracy tech used to be seen as uncrackable. It held up against hackers’ best efforts for years, contorting itself into obtuse new shapes every time anybody broke through. In 2016, a Bulgarian hacker calling himself Voksi came along with a breakthrough that revitalized the whole Denuvo cracking scene. He’s been a pillar of it ever since. Now he’s in deep trouble.
In a post today on CrackWatch, a subreddit dedicated to removing DRM and other copy protection software from games, Voksi explained the sudden outage of the website of his hacker group, REVOLT. Yesterday, he got arrested, and the police raided his house.
“It finally happened,” Voksi wrote. “I can’t say it wasn’t expected. Denuvo filed a case against me to the Bulgarian authorities. Police came yesterday and took the server PC and my personal PC. I had to go to the police afterwards and explain myself.”
In a statement sent to Kotaku, Denuvo said that Voksi’s arrest came about through the dual efforts of Denuvo parent company Irdeto and the Bulgarian Cybercrime Unit. “The swift action of the Bulgarian police on this matter shows the power of collaboration between law enforcement and technology providers and that piracy is a serious offence that will be acted upon,” said Irdeto VP of cybersecurity services Mark Mulready.
Denuvo’s statement also included a quote from the Bulgarian Cybercrime Unit, which said: “We can confirm that a 21-year-old man was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of offenses related to cybercrime and that computing equipment was confiscated. Our investigations are ongoing.”
Source: Renowned Hacker Arrested For Cracking Denuvo Anti-Piracy Tech
It’s a bit bizarre when the guys making locks start arresting the guys making keys. DRM is a bad idea anyway, but arresting people for breaking it shows you’d rather sweep your problems under a rug than fixing them. If you arrest enough people, pretty soon you will find there are a lot more problems in your software. This has been proven time and again and won’t change now.
Maybe the authorities should arrest the Denuvo people on charges of installing unwanted software along with your game on your PC.
Robin Edgar
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