Sector 0 always starts with 33C0h (at offset 00) and ends with 55AAh (at offset 511) covering a total of 512 bytes length (size of one sector) in which the master boot record resides (not the volume boot record or bootloader, which resides in the first sector of the first partition. Logical disk starts with the 1st partition (absolute sector #63) and hence there are no hidden ones from that sector onwards. To see the contents of the hidden sectors you should always select the 'physical' disk, not the logical one. I'm a happy customer of them.Ĭlick to expand.Disk editors let you see/manipulate MBR area (the boot sector). I think this is the underlying reason why the apps using encryption are less secure than those of the tailor protected ones regarding their immunity against RE attacks.Īnyway, Nitro does a good job and deserves the money asked for. Every concerned SW author develops custom protection schemes but when it comes to crypto, almost all of them resort to using ready made, what I call, “package solutions". Dealing with crypto schemes requires more maths than programming capabilities. Kinda funny way of self-healing.Īll the endeavor put in to keep the routines covert and encrypted readily fails in protecting the app. info gets written on another sector next time you start the app. The authors of Nitro must be very sure of themselves that the hiding corner they've chosen could have never been found and/or edited. If you tamper with or delete the license written on hidden sectors, Nitro complains about it next time it is launched. Dunno at where it actually starts, but sector 62 is definitely the last choice to store that.
info survives any full formatting all because it resides at a pre-partition area on your disk.
If you have a legit license, it stays forever on your disk unless you deliberately choose to deactivate it. So 'Volume ID' (which changes every time the disk is formatted) alone does not alter your HW specs.
Nitro generates a machine code to prevent x-use of their legit licenses on multiple machines. One of them had at least 3 'clean' OS installs. info written at (absolute) sectors 60 & 62. On two of the machines I've seen the lic. Writing to hidden sectors is not something that goes well with disk etiquette. Nitro's not necessarily a malware but acts like one in terms of its choice of hiding its license info.