Software piracy scene and r/CrackWatch

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Empress is a

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Alright, I joined the farms to talk about politics and business, so the last thing I'd have expected was a discussion on CrackWatch. But since some people seem to be interested I'll try to drop some info from what I remember.

To start with, I can't say much about EMPRESS' gender nor I'm able to confirm he's Voksi, I joined shortly after Voksi's arrest. There were some rumors going around about it as Masquerade said, but I haven't seen any proof and he probably hasn't seen any either. I know this is the matter that has the most pull, but there's not much development as for now. EMPRESS is doing some game modding and SKIDROW is silent, no proof has been released even inside the Scene, at least not outside SKIDROW.

On a more technical side, EMPRESS' Denuvo cracking methodology is based on the same concept as Voksi's, changing HWID info on the fly. There are a lot of details to this but there's no reason to why this would mean EMPRESS is Voksi, the same has been seen before with other crackers, namely Baldman, DeltaT, and some people in CrackLab. Keep in mind that CODEX was releasing Denuvo cracks while Voksi did as well, and the CODEX cracks were done by EMPRESS most likely.

Also be aware that SKIDROW is anything but a reliable narrator, anyone that has approached the Scene in any shape or form knows how much of a meme they are, could go on this for hours. You call it, stolen tools, rulebreaking, empty flexing, terrible opsec, the same could be said about their sister groups. Shout out to their "Denuvo solution" now that we're on it, for the curious, it's still in development. Of course Denuvo develops at a faster pace that their tool ever did, and is written by competent developers. They have never properly cracked a modern Denuvo game, mainly because of their inability to even scratch the new VM although it's not even new at this point.

Wanna comment slightly on this supposed crack just before anyone does, it's nothing at all. It's also hilarious to see people thinking somehow Denuvo employees will know how cracks are made, it's common sense at this point lol, each of those guys are way better at reversing that EMPRESS will ever be, they don't need some random internet guy to do anything, and there's nothing in that post that could be used. There's no proof of that supposed "crack" aside from that video that can't be used to confirm a thing.

This is all from quick memory and does not include scene rumors from the last months since I've not been active, doubt much has occurred however.
 
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Hi. I'm a former EMPRESS cult member.
From my understanding, EMPRESS/"Mother" has gone away (more than likely temporarily) because of this (Posted here pg 54, Aug 30th)
Greetings embers, my name is TheJewHunter

I come to you today to address the complete insanity that is the cult of empress, or zusa her bullshit name apparently given by God Himself, or Eva which "she" (using quotations because lets be real, it's a dude and we all know it) claims to be her actual name, over a good period I've been expectating this circus of horrors and was able to gather quite a large chunk of information about this insane, lunatic, retarded person, information which is in part largely presented to you in the links that i provide below.

I wont take too much time with a personal address of my own because I'm aware that you have heard the same story a million times by now, so i will just show it to you by revealing the chat export of his "HOME" group, along with aditional information both on him, and on some of those closest to him, take your time to read it.

I'd like to thank my partners, for not only we had a great time doing this, they were also quite helpful, here's the message from one of them:

ZipZap:"You think you're a messenger of God, but everything you do is unhealthy, everything a GOD wouldn't want. Moreover, you're not a WOMAN, or a MAN, or even TRANS, you're just a MISTAKE of NATURE, a PEDO and a bad cult leader. You just deserve the psychiatric hospital. In the end, you just look like your FATHER with your MOTHER'S MENTAL PROBLEMS. I hope you will have a PAINFUL life in the own HELL you've created around yourself."

Signed: TheJewHunter, Celeste, and ZipZap

P.S: Celeste thinks she's smarter and cuter than you, I agree because you are delusional beyond belief.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Kd0bDZFZH6yy6jun8knm73Hn8EukjHXT?usp=sharing (I don't know if Google Drive is like Google Docs where they can see the emails of whoever accessed it, but proceed with caution)
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After this was released, she put her cult under money-only lockdown. She and other members continued to receive "harassment", and people trying to let other members that did not see this message know about it, and the 15 year old she was cybering. The logs in the google drive are from "Home" which was seperate from the cult, and only for her closest members.
She still goes onto her piano app pianorhythm everyday under essenceoffire (or sunqueen), albeit in a room with a password hosted by one of her minions, and continues to use her telegram.

Hopefully she's taking the time to recognize anything she did wrong, but I doubt it. Hyperfocusing on game modifications, AI, and psychotic meltdowns more likely.

EDIT to add: Also, I'm sure it may not change any minds, but when I was typing to Voksi over discord it was the same time as her playing piano and typing there, and again while speaking to her in Telegram DMs. So, in my eyes, these are two separate individuals.
 
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seri0us said:
Why did you even get into that? What led you down that pathway of sexual deviancy?
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I was bored. I went into her community during Hogwarts Legacy and noticed the drama, followed it into the "philosophy" channel, lived through each ban wave.
I ended up in "Home" because EMPRESS genuinely enjoyed me, I guess. The cybersex requirement didn't matter much to me. I only left when she decided to involve actual children.

It was truly something new everyday, and I genuinely had nothing better to do, unfortunately.
(Image is her talking about her "Erusa"/peen having a mind of it's own)
 

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Well, it finally happened.

EXPOSiNG.UNSECURE.SCENE.GROUP.DARKSiDERS.READNFO-DARKDOX​

EXPOSiNG.UNSECURE.SCENE.GROUP.DARKSiDERS.READNFO-DARKDOX.png


This is what I meant with terrible opsec lol. Got nothing much to add, everything said is correct, although I can't confirm the nervma.com domain and he also missed some arvenius subdomains used for irc. Also, the user list is either outdated or DARKSiDERS doesn't clean their channels, some of the users mentioned have been retired for months and even years.
 
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Propaganda said:
Well, it finally happened.

EXPOSiNG.UNSECURE.SCENE.GROUP.DARKSiDERS.READNFO-DARKDOX​

View attachment 5620604

This is what I meant with terrible opsec lol. Got nothing much to add, everything said is correct, although I can't confirm the nervma.com domain and he also missed some arvenius subdomains used for irc. Also, the user list is either outdated or DARKSiDERS doesn't clean their channels, some of the users mentioned have been retired for months and even years.
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As a tiktok brain fried zoomie, what does this mean, can I still use SKIDROW releases? or are they pozzed now with malware?
 
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There's this video that keeps popping in my feed despite the numerous times I've selected the "not interested/don't recommend channel" option on youtube, I've decided to give in via invidious and the video looks the most disingenuous shit ever.
invidious link

I went to check his game (which he linked on the video description) and it looks like an advertisement stunt, because there's like 8 reviews and the steamdb charts don't look too hot either.
lmao.png

everyone wants his shit gayme.png

Totally not a marketing stunt. Too bad it backfired because nobody gave a shit about his retarded game.

just pirate it bro.png

just pirate it quote.png

There's these comments saying "just pirate the games instead of buying the keys" and I'd like to argue with that moron with: How? Have you checked cs.rin.ru lately? most games are all tagged "[not cracked]" due to both the Scene becoming a lolfest, Denuvo keeps hiring whoever manages to crack that virus disguised as a DRM.
These kind of videos have always ticked me off, but this one is so egregiously anti-consumer with his message, i can't understand why people that play videogames put up with this stockholm syndrome-inducing industry.

as an off topic: i'm falling in love with short-wave radios, we should probably make a thread about, between Counting Stations, Radars, Those activists messing with the buzzer, odd morse codes popping up, it looks fairly interesting.
 

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Koi Fish said:
as an off topic: i'm falling in love with short-wave radios, we should probably make a thread about, between Counting Stations, Radars, Those activists messing with the buzzer, odd morse codes popping up, it looks fairly interesting.
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As a fellow new shortwave sperg, I invite you to HAM it up.
 
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Koi Fish said:
There's these comments saying "just pirate the games instead of buying the keys" and I'd like to argue with that moron with: How?
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that was always retarded and only remotely relevant when some devs made a stink about "illegal keys", but when asked "well, how do those people get the keys YOU GENERATED in the first place?" this was their go-to answer.
it reached so retarded levels like tinybuild making big claims about fraud, turns out they ran their webstore without any fraud detection (but MUH 100% CUT FUCK STEAM), then got hit with massive chargeback fees from stolen credit cards. then they complained about g2a laundering those keys, but when g2a told them to provide the list so they can remove/revert them tinybuild went even more retarded saying they won't work with g2a (wat) and they don't have a record of the keys anyway (WAT). they finally got BTFO when people pointed out fucking microsoft of all companies successfuly worked with g2a in the past to do exactly that, but those dipshits couldn't.

after this no one really cared anymore and most devs/publishers are smarter than making a fuzz about it.

TLDR: people are retarded and regurgitating "common sense" from a decade ago...
 
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It's not video game piracy, but the leading anime torrent website, animebytes.tv, has been teetering on the edge of annihilation for a couple of days. The cause? Their sysop, "proton," has paper hands when faced with the slightest of registrar issues.

Proton registered AnimeBytes with Sarek to use the Tuvalu TLD, .tv. It seems that Tuvalu has broadly recalled many web domains that use the TLD for vanity, including AnimeBytes, resulting in an unexpected registrar hold. The admin somehow determined that this was the result of a government investigation and planned to SHUT IT DOWN.

20:05:15 <Global> [proton] help

20:05:31 <Global> [proton] broken piece of shit

20:09:37 <Global> [proton] Regarding DNS issues; for now I still do not have a reply from registrar but the domain remains in 'serverHold' state from nic.tv (registry) ...

20:09:40 <Global> [proton] Current assumption should be that this is legal hold on domain ...

20:09:42 <Global> [proton] I'm giving registrar another 12h for reply before purging everything, all servers except for IRC are currently down and encrypted at rest ...

20:09:44 <Global> [proton] We have no intention of continuing to endanger ourselves or anyone else here by continuing to operate site if it has been noticed by authorities.
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Die Animejugend despaired that their sysop is retarded. Many .tv websites were experiencing the same issue, and it was clear that anime torrents were not the cause. Proton was talked down from the ledge the next day:

2024-02-20 ??:??:?? <&proton> Amid some new information, we have decided not to proceed with a scheduled purge. Servers will remain powered down and encrypted-at-rest. We will update you as we learn more.

2024-02-20 14:31:42 <&proton> might as well take this time to clarify some stuff

2024-02-20 14:31:47 <&proton> - There was no domain transfer performed, either by us or by registrar (the GoDaddy -> Sarek conclusion was incorrect due to misleading data provided by Cloudflare, in actuality the domain has been on Sarek for at least a year).

2024-02-20 14:31:47 <&proton> - The domain has been "seized" by registry (nic.tv) with 'serverHold' EPP code, the reason for this remains unknown. Neither us nor Sarek (registrar) are in control of this domain at the present time.

2024-02-20 14:31:47 <&proton> - The information about certain other .tv domains under Sarek being in same state came to light after 12h grace period was announced.

2024-02-20 14:31:47 <&proton> - Some of the other affected domain raise suspicions, while others seem innocent to a point where they would have no reason to use privacy-focuses registrar.

2024-02-20 14:31:47 <&proton> - Total loss of domain is still very likely even if this was not targeted at us.

2024-02-20 14:31:47 <&proton> - We are willing to continue operating site under new domain should the issue be confirmed to be unrelated to us.

2024-02-20 14:31:47 <&proton> - There was no de-facto .es to .tv switch-over, it happened over very long period back in mid-2010s, the .es domain served only as a backup when dominios.es (.es registry) decided to enforce KYC on every domain (simultaneously at the same time, our previous registrar Gandi decided to remove cryptocurrency payment as viable option, forcing us to

2024-02-20 14:31:47 <&proton> seek a new home for .tv domain).

2024-02-20 14:31:47 <&proton> - 12 hours of grace period is reasonable timeframe to expect response if your domain has been seized. These events are rare and raise a lot of red flags if done without prior notice.

2024-02-20 14:31:47 <&proton> - All servers use encryption-at-rest, it is extremely unlikely they were physically compromised (the server hosting actual site and database is physical machine), however in event of legal enforcement showing interest in site, staff is prepared and willing to destroy data stored on these servers to avoid being forced by legal enforcement to reveal

2024-02-20 14:31:47 <&proton> decryption keys. Performing such action is very much about users, as staff would likely gain another charge for destruction of evidence.

2024-02-20 14:31:47 <&proton> - There was a recent downtime of IRC server which happened at about the same time as one of our users being arrested. The actual downtime seemed unrelated however it raises suspicions given timing as well as current domain issues.

2024-02-20 14:31:47 <&proton> - Arrested user (mentioned above) was informed the actual reason was for posting lolicon/3dcg/hentai in last year. Further, he was informed the site he posted to was under investigation; no further details were given. Said user did not post such content to our site outside of links to externally hosted content on our IRC.
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An anime site admin is getting jammed up on lolicon charges; go figure. That's probably worth another post on its own. Ultimately, it seems that animebytes will live to see another day under a new domain.

Let us all take a moment to appreciate our fearless and honorable Dear Sneeder, who is regularly challenged by actually malicious actors and institutional abuse, and never falters in the face of adversity.
 
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Lusotropicalismo said:
It's not video game piracy, but the leading anime torrent website, animebytes.tv, has been teetering on the edge of annihilation for a couple of days. The cause? Their sysop, "proton," has paper hands when faced with the slightest of registrar issues.

Proton registered AnimeBytes with Sarek to use the Tuvalu TLD, .tv. It seems that Tuvalu has broadly recalled many web domains that use the TLD for vanity, including AnimeBytes, resulting in an unexpected registrar hold. The admin somehow determined that this was the result of a government investigation and planned to SHUT IT DOWN.
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But http://nyaa.si is the leading torrent site
 
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