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@piracy How do i check if a crack is safe or not?

I'm trying to install a cracked version of davinci resolve on my pc, but I don't know if it's safe. is there a way to check easily?

#linux #help

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[–] los_chill@programming.dev 35 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Test strips. PSA: Everyone should test their drugs and carry narcan.

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 17 points 10 months ago

I was gonna say "have someone else smoke it first"

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 15 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If it's suss use a vm before your main OS.

[–] FracturedPelvis@lemmy.ml 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is a good idea and a good practice in my opinion. Some malicious code detects when it’s being sandboxed and hides itself until it’s running somewhere it can do damage though.

[–] 7Sea_Sailor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Once malware is VM aware it can also get outside a VM. Furthermore, malware can be written to seat itself comfortably in your PC and lay low for hours, days, weeks before becoming active. Installing in a VM and waiting for shit to hit the fan is not always reliable.

[–] bamboo@lemm.ee 7 points 10 months ago

Getting out of a VM reliably is not usually trivial, and VM escapes are usually designed to target specific configurations rather than an arbitrary deployment. A VM with a minimum amount of shared resources is usually a reasonable security boundary unless you think the malware you’re analyzing has hypervisor-specific 0 days.

[–] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 10 months ago

And start with no network for the VM

[–] 0x2d@lemmy.ml 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] solarzones@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago

I always keep a bootable usb just incase…

[–] Maxy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 10 months ago

If the installer is small enough (<650MB I believe), you can upload it to virustotal.com to have it be scanned by ~65 antivirus programs

[–] ccdfa@lemm.ee 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Isn't DaVinci resolve free?

[–] millions@universeodon.com 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

@ccdfa yeah but h264/mp4 exports are paid only from what I heard

[–] 7Sea_Sailor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

On windows, the only features locked behind the paywall are required by professionals in film. This includes, but isn't limited to, larger than 4K timelines, 10 bit footage, advanced fusion filters and effects, niche export quality settings. As long as you're not working in the media industry, you won't need these.

Try the free version first, before jumping into a crack. See if you even like it.

[–] GerPrimus@feddit.de 1 points 10 months ago

export it as some QuickTime/mov/whatever and recode it with handbrake.

[–] helix2301@twit.social 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] DragonZlaver@noc.social 10 points 10 months ago

@helix2301 @millions @piracy it is both free and there paid version of it that has more features as if you scroll down to near the bottom of the page https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

[–] Pringles@lemm.ee 3 points 10 months ago

Well, if your AV tells you there is a backdoor in it, don't open it, I would say. There can be valid reasons for cracks to be flagged, but you can usually check what it does by uploading it to a sandbox or checking the hash on virustotal.

[–] DragonZlaver@noc.social 3 points 10 months ago

@millions @piracy I use shotcut for my video editing needs on linux not locked against any pay wall features https://www.shotcut.org/features/

[–] kaidelorenzo@lemmy.today 2 points 10 months ago

run in a VM/container?

[–] kusivittula@sopuli.xyz 2 points 10 months ago

first visual inspection: is there any rash or poop or anything nasty in there? then sniff.

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 10 months ago

Back when I used cracks often the cracks were small keygens and sometimes a patched main exe/dll, so I could just generate the key in a vm/sandboxed environment and inspect the patched binary, usually they did nothing weird. Huge repacks are often very sketchy though.. Nowadays there are many great FOSS alternatives so I tend to use them more.

[–] ColdWater@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago

I never used Linux before, is virus still a problem for cracked software on Linux?

[–] Kissaki@feddit.de 1 points 10 months ago

A crack changes program code and is executed. There is no easy way to check if it is safe.

Unless you inspect the source code or binary code (directly or through reverse-engineering) you can not verify it.

What's left without that is attempts at gaining confidence through analysis trust of third parties - the providers, distributors, creators - who have to be confirmed beyond a matching text label too.

The alternative to or extension of being confidently safe or accepting the risk is to sandbox the execution. Run the crack in a restricted environment with limited access in case it does things you do not want to. Optionally monitoring what it does. Which has to be put into relation of what the program does without the crack.