Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

[Izrullah]

Could anyone comment on this EA protection that I created?

 

This file is an installer that installs MetaTrader 4 packed with a sample EA. It also contain multi server login such as Alpari, IBFX, Masterforex, etc. I believe EA is well protected so I hope anyone experienced, please try to at least extract the file & comment. Thanks!

[⭐ bbrain]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

Hi Izrullah,

 

I dont like to run any .exe on my comp. Please post the .EX4, and we will try to decomple it.

 

Br.

[⭐ birt]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

Hi Izrullah,

 

I dont like to run any .exe on my comp. Please post the .EX4, and we will try to decomple it.

 

Br.

 

Run it in a VM. I keep a rather small, empty VM and every time I want to run such an exe I just make a copy of the VM and delete it when done.

 

Basically, what he did was to pack all the experts dir in the .exe file. The files aren't even encrypted or packed, I'm guessing it's a rather primitive tool that did it. I extracted it with a simple hexeditor... My advice is that you shouldn't bother with such a protection - if someone determined wants to do it, they will simply dump the file from memory, even if it's encrypted and/or compressed in the exe; at least that's what I would've done if that was the case.

 

bbrain, if you wanna have fun with it, get http://www.4shared.com/file/127436195/1d2ccf4b/, it's the exe file with the packed stuff inside.

 

Izrullah, I'm not posting the source code of your EA since you might not be comfortable with that. However, if you want to see what it looks like decompiled, I can upload the mq4 and post the link here.

[⭐ bbrain]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

Run it in a VM. I keep a rather small, empty VM and every time I want to run such an exe I just make a copy of the VM and delete it when done.

 

Basically, what he did was to pack all the experts dir in the .exe file. The files aren't even encrypted or packed, I'm guessing it's a rather primitive tool that did it. I extracted it with a simple hexeditor... My advice is that you shouldn't bother with such a protection - if someone determined wants to do it, they will simply dump the file from memory, even if it's encrypted and/or compressed in the exe; at least that's what I would've done if that was the case.

 

bbrain, if you wanna have fun with it, get http://[email protected]/file/127436195/1d2ccf4b/, it's the exe file with the packed stuff inside.

 

Izrullah, I'm not posting the source code of your EA since you might not be comfortable with that. However, if you want to see what it looks like decompiled, I can upload the mq4 and post the link here.

Hi,

 

I dont like to play with this :)

[⭐ birt]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

Hi,

 

I dont like to play with this :)

 

There's nothing dangerous about it, you can extract the EX4 with a hexeditor that is able to delete parts of a file.

[qingyang2005]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

None ex4 was found at all . I installed it on my vm.

[⭐ birt]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

None ex4 was found at all . I installed it on my vm.

 

It's because the ex4 and some other files are embedded in terminal.exe. To get a more clear picture, imagine that when you run it, terminal.exe creates a virtual drive in memory that is accessible only to its process, puts the EX4 and some other files on that drive and uses them from there.

 

I extracted the EX4 and it decompiled ok. Basically, the idea is that while this particular protection may hold against the regular user, there will typically be an individual with enough experience to remove it easily. There is a single type of EA protection that cannot be removed but that discussion is beyond the scope of this thread.

[Izrullah]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

You're right, Birt. It can be easily "extracted". I've tried encrypt & compress which makes it harder but the outcome disabled the .ex4/.mq4. Compressing the terminal.exe alone using generic compress also fails to initialize the unpack .mq4 or .ex4. Is there any solution to this problem? Thanks!

[⭐ birt]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

Packing it within terminal.exe is not a good solution in my opinion. Not only do you have to maintain a whole metatrader package, but it's not even very secure - even if you compress & encrypt it in the .exe, MT4 has to have it uncompressed & decrypted in memory in order to use it. At that point, it's pretty easy to dump it to disk.

 

A relatively easy and secure solution is to use one of the available commercial "protector" programs. Basically, they make your EA somewhat resistant to decompiling. Search the forums for it, one of them was MQL Defender, the other was erm... forex cio something-something. However, if your EA is not garbage and it would actually be worth the time removing its protection, I'm pretty sure that even the commercial protections can be addressed, given some time. Still, most people will just give up when they notice it won't decompile with the tools readily available. Personally, I would definitely not even bother trying unless your EA was really stellar in some way. What I'm trying to say is that the available commercial protection tools are quite good up to a point.

 

I was toying with the idea of creating an unbreakable EA protection and commercializing it for a low price - I actually conceptualized it already, but seeing that almost none of the EAs are protected with a commercial software - not even the decent ones that actually sell lots of copies - I gave up, there's probably no interest at all. Basically, the EA programmers are not willing to cough up the small amount it takes to protect their code and they think they can do fine if they work out the protection of their EAs on their own - needless to say, they're sadly mistaken. It's laughable actually... Megadroid has antidebugging code that's supposed to detect SoftICE in Windows 9x, I found that terribly funny given the fact that it doesn't detect SoftICE in Windows 2000/XP/etc.

 

Bottom line is, if you want to take my advice, should you want to sell your EA, you're better off buying an existing, proven protection technology.

[Izrullah]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

Thanks for the suggestion but I rather dll protect it then virtualize them within the terminal.exe. I believe that will make it harder to crack since the .dll is not even physically available. And with something like Themida VM function that is random, it will be much harder to dump & rebuild.

 

Anyway, I have no commercial intention and actually fooling around with it for a friend.

[⭐ bbrain]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

Thanks for the suggestion but I rather dll protect it then virtualize them within the terminal.exe. I believe that will make it harder to crack since the .dll is not even physically available. And with something like Themida VM function that is random, it will be much harder to dump & rebuild.

 

Anyway, I have no commercial intention and actually fooling around with it for a friend.

Yes, put all external functions in themida's VM, it is makes hard to decompile it.

 

Br.

[manganate]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

...but seeing that almost none of the EAs are protected with a commercial software - not even the decent ones that actually sell lots of copies - I gave up, there's probably no interest at all. Basically, the EA programmers are not willing to cough up the small amount it takes to protect their code and they think they can do fine if they work out the protection of their EAs on their own - needless to say, they're sadly mistaken.

 

This says a lot about the nature of selling EAs. Are any of them worthwhile? Why go to the bother of marketing them in the first place if they are good? The ones that usually sell a lot of copies come from snake-oil merchants.

Surely it is better to keep your EA to yourself and make lots of money by using it. No protection, no marketing, no worries. :)>-

[⭐ birt]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

This says a lot about the nature of selling EAs. Are any of them worthwhile? Why go to the bother of marketing them in the first place if they are good? The ones that usually sell a lot of copies come from snake-oil merchants.

Surely it is better to keep your EA to yourself and make lots of money by using it. No protection, no marketing, no worries. :)>-

 

Actually, no. How much can an average EA coder come up with for a forex investment? 5k USD? 10k? Let's assume it's 10k, but I think the figure is a bit exaggerated. FAP Turbo (ok, it's probably the one that sold most copies) is rumored to have sold over 40.000 copies... At 149$ each, that's close to 6.000.000 USD in only a few months. After paying the affiliates, taxes, misc other expenses, it's still probably well over 3 mil if not over 4 mil raw profit. Even if you have an extremely good EA that works in all possible market conditions and has a very good return on investment, I don't think it's realistic to expect to turn 10k into 3 mil, even if given a few years. As an added bonus, you can choose to invest a part of the money in forex if you're sure of your EA.

[manganate]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

Actually, no. How much can an average EA coder come up with for a forex investment? 5k USD? 10k? Let's assume it's 10k, but I think the figure is a bit exaggerated. FAP Turbo (ok, it's probably the one that sold most copies) is rumored to have sold over 40.000 copies... At 149$ each, that's close to 6.000.000 USD in only a few months. After paying the affiliates, taxes, misc other expenses, it's still probably well over 3 mil if not over 4 mil raw profit. Even if you have an extremely good EA that works in all possible market conditions and has a very good return on investment, I don't think it's realistic to expect to turn 10k into 3 mil, even if given a few years. As an added bonus, you can choose to invest a part of the money in forex if you're sure of your EA.

 

This begs the question - Marketing vs Trading? We assume everyone is greedy and wants more profit. Marketeers get it from selling dodgy EAs, usually with catastrophic draw downs. IMO, only a fool would by them (without source code). They usually do not conform to a trader's style, will only work for a short period and if something goes wrong where is the after sales representative?

Buying and using an EA is similar to contributing to a HYIP.

Agreed, the marketeers make a whole lot more money selling the EAs than anyone would make using them. The more they churn out the better the chance of one reaching the top of the EA charts, so to speak. No need for expensive protection because of the short lifetime.

 

For me, I automate the parts of my trading style that can be automated. As for marketing, I might re-work one of Steven Lee Jones EAs and get him to sell it for me! =))

[qingyang2005]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

It was said that EURONIS EA was protected by MQL Defender . but it still broken .

 

hello , birt :

 

I have big interest for your EA protect software . when will you release it ?

 

Pm to me when you release it .

 

thanks in advance.

[⭐ birt]

Re: Test this EA/.EX4 Protection?

 

Uhh, I'm not releasing anything, there's not enough demand to warrant the work involved. Most of the EA makers are not worried by protecting their EAs but by marketing them to reach as many buyers as possible.

 

I can give you some tips to make it uncrackable on your own, though:

- make some of your calculations only at the bar opening and use a timeframe higher than M1

- move all the code that does calculations at the bar opening in a PHP or ASP, including indicator recode if needed

- make a DLL that feeds the data to the PHP/ASP application at every bar open, along with the account number and license key

- if you want backtesting to work, you can hardcode some results in the DLL, that should keep the users happy

- if you're not worried about the number of accounts this is being used on, you can just leave it at that and restrict usage per-IP-range per-user

- if you want to limit the usage to a number of accounts, make the DLL receive the WindowHandle() from MT4, figure out the parent window using windows API, read the title of the parent window and make sure it includes the same account number returned by AccountNumber(); you can go further with this by checking the log files.

- protect the above DLL with Themida or a similar extreme protection (you should actually buy Themida, the versions you can find are old)

 

Of course, this is only worth doing if your EA is actually making money.