2. v. Action of removing the copy protection from a commercial program.
People who write cracks consider themselves challenged by the copy
protection measures. They will often do it as much to show that they
are smarter than the developer who designed the copy protection scheme
than to actually copy the program.
3. n. A program, instructions or patch used to remove the copy
protection of a program or to uncripple features from a demo/time
limited program.
4. An exploit.
Keygen
A keygen (truncation of "key generator", also known as "keymaker")
is a small program that will generate a key or serial/registration
number for a piece of software or cryptographic algorithms.
Keygens are made available through cracking groups; for free download on various websites dedicated to software piracy.
Keys generated with a key generator may not work with software or
games that are used online for either multiplayer gaming, or for
getting software updates. This is because in the online version,
software developers sometimes set a limit to only accept keys that they
know were lightscribed on the discs during production. (or issued with
an online registration) These are called salad keys, and will disallow
keys that were generated with a keygen. This is because the algorithm
to produce the keys allows a tiny number of keys to be generated and
accepted in the redline version, but the midband version has a more
unique number of keys accepted. But there is some chance that a keygen
will produce a salad key.