Photoshop Filter Hacking
registry monitoring

by +daQ
(31 July 1997, slightly edited by Fravia)


Courtesy of Fravia's page of reverse engineering

Well, have a look... pretty interesting reverse enginnering

Photoshop Filter Hacking

or how Wdasm can be used on other types of files

Difficulty:    Beginner
Time to Fish:  1-2 hours
Tools:         RegistryMonitor, Hexpert32, W32dasmXX
Comments:      Not too difficult of a patch, in fact, only 1 byte needs to be
               changed inorder for this program to run forever.
 
Preamble:
In the world of programming, there are several different forms of code
that are produced.  Most often, these are seen as .dll, .exe, .com, ...
Yet today, I am going to introduce you to another form of program.  The
Photoshop Filter (.8bi) program.
 
 
Target information: (From their web site)

Pegasus' flag ship compression tool PICPRESS is now available within Adobe Photoshop! Creates smaller JPEGs, Progressive JPEGs and PIC images! Pegasus JPEG files are 10% to 30% smaller than standard JPEGs created for other programs. Create thumbnails and a full size representation at the same time. Preview the results before compressing! New version works with Photoshop 4.0. Includes 10 Trial Compressions! The Better JPEG Plug-in! They got that right! Photoshop has the *worst* jpg compressor I've ever seen in my entire life! Before Adobe bout Aldus out, Aldus made a program called Photostyler. They had a slide-adjustable quality factor for jpgs, made small images at great sharpness. BUT the conglomerant adobe couldn't stand the competition, so they bought them out. Now, Photoshop 4, instead of having improved by that technology, has plowed ahead with their own, outdated compressors and outdated items... so much for development. Enter PicPress PicPress is *the* best image compressor i have ever seen...i see about a 50% increase in savings. Smaller images mean faster downloads and less wasted bandwidth. This translates to more enjoyable websurfing with less wait. From the info that they provide, we know that we are given 10 Free compressions. Translating this, there are 3 different ways it can count out our number of uses. 1) Write to the registry. 2) Write to the some .ini file 3) Hide it in the windows.ini file, under some bogus name/info Start Photoshop. After this monstrous program boots, load any image, choose File->Save As. Scroll down to where our .jpg (pegasys) is listed, and before hitting enter, start all our monitoring programs. It truly helps to filter these entries (you'll see all the relevant info scroll across the screen like this) (I've highlited in blue the important parts, and in red the parts that _may_ be important...)

712 Photoshp OpenKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS hKey: 0xC50BCCA8 713 Photoshp QueryValueEx HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress\OWNERREGISTRATION SUCCESS "" 714 Photoshp CloseKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS 715 Photoshp OpenKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS hKey: 0xC50BCCA8 716 Photoshp QueryValueEx HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress\LIMITED_BASE_LEVEL SUCCESS "2003" 717 Photoshp CloseKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS 718 Photoshp OpenKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS hKey: 0xC50BCCA8 719 Photoshp QueryValueEx HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress\OWNERNAME SUCCESS "daQdaQ" 720 Photoshp CloseKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS 721 Photoshp OpenKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS hKey: 0xC50BCCA8 722 Photoshp SetValueEx HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress\LIMITED_BASE_LEVEL SUCCESS "2002" 723 Photoshp CloseKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS 724 Photoshp OpenKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS hKey: 0xC50BCCA8 725 Photoshp QueryValueEx HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress\OWNERREGISTRATION SUCCESS "" 726 Photoshp CloseKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS 727 Photoshp OpenKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS hKey: 0xC50BCCA8 728 Photoshp QueryValueEx HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress\LIMITED_BASE_LEVEL SUCCESS "2002" 729 Photoshp CloseKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS 730 Photoshp OpenKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS hKey: 0xC50BCCA8 731 Photoshp QueryValueEx HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress\OWNERNAME SUCCESS "daQdaQ" 732 Photoshp CloseKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS 733 Photoshp OpenKey HKLM\Software\PegasusImaging\Dll\PICN13 SUCCESS hKey: 0xC50BCC8C 734 Photoshp QueryValueEx HKLM\Software\PegasusImaging\Dll\PICN13 SUCCESS "C:\Pegasus" 735 Photoshp CloseKey HKLM\Software\PegasusImaging\Dll\PICN13 SUCCESS 736 Photoshp OpenKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS hKey: 0xC50BCBF4 737 Photoshp QueryValueEx HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress\COLORPICVALUE SUCCESS "236" 738 Photoshp CloseKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS 739 Photoshp OpenKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS hKey: 0xC50BCBF4 740 Photoshp QueryValueEx HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress\CHROMINANCE SUCCESS "36" 741 Photoshp CloseKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS 742 Photoshp OpenKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS hKey: 0xC50BCBF4 743 Photoshp QueryValueEx HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress\LUMINANCE SUCCESS "30" 744 Photoshp CloseKey HKCU\Software\PegasusImaging\Apps\Plugins\IMJ_Compress SUCCESS

Allright! What did we learn from looking at this? There are a few numerical places where the hidden/encrypted trials may be saved. Why are we sure it is in the registry and not in another file ? Well, all our other snooping revealed _no_ file access. That leaves these interesting calls to the registry. At log entry 713 we see a blatant pointer to OWNERREGISTRATION. Hmmmm....what could this be? Lets turn our attention to the trial encryption. In only one place, is one key read, modified, then read again. This is at logs locations 716, 722, 728. When we run this filter again, we find that the same key is read, modified, then read again. Except that the value is decremented by one. *This* is our key. Now, the way i traced this call was extremely laborious. I went into W32dasm, and searched for all the error messages i could find. There were lots... :( Lets try some zen: If i was a lazy programmer, and i wanted a simple simple simple, simple, simple, _simple_ protection, i would probably write it like this: int trial_run=0; int trial_enc= some random number (here it will be 2005); trial_run = trial_enc - 10) printf("Error!"); else write.key Soooooo... as you'll see 0x07d6 is the hex value of 2006 (this target uses it... that's the reason I have choosen this random number :-) but let's search the dissassembly of the file for good old 10 (0xA)... perhaps our programmer was so lazy, that, thiugh he tried to hide the trial count through a random bogus number, -alas - he used a simple (0xA) subtraction! :) * Reference to String Resource ID=00001: "Pegasus JPEG format plugin module Copyright 1995-97 Pegasus" :10005CC6 C745E401000000 mov [ebp-1C], 00000001 :10005CCD 8D45DC lea eax, dword ptr [ebp-24] :10005CD0 50 push eax :10005CD1 68A8B40310 push 1003B4A8 ; ->"%d" :10005CD6 8D8594FEFFFF lea eax, dword ptr [ebp+FE94] :10005CDC 50 push eax :10005CDD E834B90000 call 10011616 :10005CE2 83C40C add esp, 0000000C :10005CE5 816DDCD6070000 sub dword ptr [ebp-24], 000007D6 bogus sum :10005CEC 8345DC0A add dword ptr [ebp-24], 0000000A BINGO! :10005CF0 8B45DC mov eax, dword ptr [ebp-24] :10005CF3 8B8D5CFEFFFF mov ecx, dword ptr [ebp+FE5C] :10005CF9 89415C mov dword ptr [ecx+5C], eax :10005CFC 837DDC00 cmp dword ptr [ebp-24], 00000000 :10005D00 0F8E0A000000 jle 10005D10 :10005D06 837DDC0A cmp dword ptr [ebp-24], 0000000A BINGO! :10005D0A 0F8E3A000000 jle 10005D4A I don't feel that there are any more explanations needed. The code itself is self explanatory...There is the subtraction, an addition, and then a compare. If we change the addition to 11 (0xb) then it will always add 1 more than the last trial subtracted...in other words, the counts will always be equal. So our trial will never expire, which is what we wanted to begin with. So, thanks to PicPress' simple protection scheme the world may become more bandwidth friendly! (c) +daQ 1997. All rights reserved.

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