Bypassing wine detection?

[tamazan]

Hello.

I have a scenario which includes an windows application detection mechanism. The programmers behind this application have programmed a detection mechanism which will detect virtual machines and wine. By examining with Process Monitor, I see it does this by checking for the registry key 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Wine' and some other keys made by VMs (not relevant here). If it succeeds with opening this key, it will popup with a message saying that "This applications can not run in virtual machines".

I thought it would be easier than it was, to download the latest Wine source and rename every occurrence of "\\Wine\\" and "\\Wine" and "Software\\Wine" to "\\Rine\\", "\\Rine" and "Software\\Rine", respectively. This is a tedious process, partly because I am horrible with regex and partly because I just want to change the registry key, not the name of WineDbg.dll for example. I did this and compiled, made a new prefix, and try to run the application again (with the new binary, wineserver and loader). This time, same popup appears, and yes, wine still creates 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Wine', only this time it ALSO creates 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Rine'.

I could go on and grep the source much more, but it must be an easier way to run the application. If I rename the name in regex will of course make a new one. My first try was to disassemble the application executable in ollydbg, but the clever programmers have made the code self-modifying in a way, so I can't even find any api calls to open registry (RegOpenKey), and I really don't have any experience with disassembling either.

To conclude; A windows application checks for Wine registry key and won't start. How can I start the application any way, without modifying the application itself?

A big cake to whoever finds the answer!

Good evening.

[dimesio]

The copyright holder of the app has the right to set whatever terms of use they want, including prohibiting running it under Wine. You have the right not to use their software if you don't like their terms of use. Circumventing DRM is not supported here.

[tamazan]

The copyright holder of the app has the right to set whatever terms of use they want, including prohibiting running it under Wine. You have the right not to use their software if you don't like their terms of use. Circumventing DRM is not supported here.

Yes, making a bypass is againts the Terms of Service, and this is a case of circumventing DRM. I appologise for asking.

While this is a question about circumventing DRM, hence breaking the agreement with the copyright holder, it is not actually illegal. Therefore I recommend adding "circumvention of DRM" to the Forum Guidelines as an extension to 5.2.

Have a nice, legal day.

[dimesio]

While this is a question about circumventing DRM, hence breaking the agreement with the copyright holder, it is not actually illegal.

Circumventing DRM is illegal in the U.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Mi ... yright_Act

[tamazan]

While this is a question about circumventing DRM, hence breaking the agreement with the copyright holder, it is not actually illegal.

Circumventing DRM is illegal in the U.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Mi ... yright_Act

That may be, but I'm in Norway, and it is not illegal here. Therefore I would mention in the Forum Guidelines that "Illegal" actually means "Illegal in the U.S."

[dimesio]

The servers hosting this site are located in the U.S.

I've changed "breaking copy protection" to "circumventing DRM" in the forum guidelines.