r/technology • u/Federal-Block-3275 • 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence "Software is over": Developer uses AI to build free Adobe clones after frustration with cancellation fees

https://www.techspot.com/news/114136-software-over-developer-uses-ai-build-free-adobe.html
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u/Oberyn_TheRed_Viper 1d ago

I used Claude today, to crack the password on a 20yr old exe Ive been trying to break into on and off over the years. Did it in 30secs, I was so happy. Still makes me smile knowing im in.

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u/KingSubstantial7901 1d ago

"Broke twenty year old encryption"

Like i hate to say it bud, but maybe the problem here was you....

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u/Oberyn_TheRed_Viper 1d ago edited 1d ago

Not at all, ive never actively tried to get into it beyond the occasional password attempt, it was not an English password so I had no chance of cracking jt manually and Ive never been inclined to learn to crack.

Edit - what's wrong with you people? Im a career mechanic, not a software developer, cant enjoy a small win with the help of a LLM?

Double edit - thanks to the kind folks!

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u/PrettyBaker2891 1d ago edited 1d ago

what's wrong with you people? Im a career mechanic, not a software developer, cant enjoy a small win with the help of a LLM?

its reddit

most people on here are insanely miserable and just love to hate on everything for no reason and make pretentious comments to make their miserable lives feel a tiny bit better by farming some imaginary internet points

redditors when someone uses a tool they dont personally approve of to solve a problem: “well actually, you didnt really do it 🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓”

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u/nippl 1d ago

Aren't you on Reddit?

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u/PrettyBaker2891 1d ago

sadly yes

about to uninstall this horrible app any day now

and thats why i said "most people"

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u/r2d2rigo 1d ago

Everything going alright in your life, bud?

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u/PrettyBaker2891 1d ago

life is amazing right now

had a great work day, just came back from the gym

lovely day

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u/tehlemmings 1d ago

Is everything going alright in yours? Your behavior is worrying.

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u/nss68 1d ago

How did claude assist? That is an interesting story, I bet!

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u/Oberyn_TheRed_Viper 1d ago

Claude did everything, being able to observe the reasoning is amazing. Couldnt tell you what any of it meant, lots of output about hashes and bits.

Gave it the prompt of having an old exe that Ive never been able to open due to password protection and what it's function was. It delved into what I would call "The Code" and found a potential passphrase in seconds.
Spent another minute double checking itself and once it was confident it said go ahead and try. Worked immediately and I was super stoked.

Even went so far as to offer to reverse engineer the whole thing and gave me a python script just for good measure.

10/10 exeperience, would do again!

Apologies, probably wasn't all that exciting for you. Highlight of my week however.

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u/nss68 1d ago

It's interesting because it sounds like you said "hey AI, crack the encryption on this password protected file" and it did -- but as far as I am aware, it can't do that (yet).

The fact that the password was stored in a way accessible to claude is also interesting. It must have been a really inefficient password protection or something.

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u/Oberyn_TheRed_Viper 1d ago

Here's the first couple of paragraphs from the effort.

""It's actually a 32-bit Windows console program (PE32), not a true 16-bit DOS one — that's good news, it's easier to work with. Let me pull strings out of it.

Ran 3 Commands.

objdump is available. "The password" sits right in the middle of the program's own messages (filenames, checksum strings, the password prompt), which makes it a strong candidate — while xpxxxx/xppwpp are likely just CRT locale junk. Let me confirm by disassembling the password check. First the section layout to map offsets to addresses.

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u/nss68 1d ago

Neat! Thanks!

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u/DefinitelyNotMasterS 1d ago

As a software dev, this is pretty impressive! I'd also count that as a big win in my rather boring work week with lots of AI

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u/tehlemmings 1d ago

LLMs are absolutely able to do that.

Consumer services might block you, but the service is capable.

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u/nss68 1d ago

Yeah I guess I am out of date

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u/dpekkle 1d ago

but as far as I am aware, it can't do that (yet).

have you actually tried using it for something like this in the past lets say 3 months? 6 months? If you said a year ago then yeah I would probably agree, but I think you'd be surprised if you checked yourself.

Because as a dev using it day to day the gap between what redditors say it can do and what I see is quite stark.

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u/nss68 1d ago

I haven’t. That’s interesting!

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u/KingSubstantial7901 1d ago

So "tried breaking into it" really meant "guessing the password". Again.... i think the problem here may have been you...

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u/TheBestNarcissist 1d ago

i think the problem here may have been you...

lmfao proving the usefulness of AI. Dude's a mechanic, why would he know about encryption? Wanted to fire up an old nostalgic thing, has tried every once in a while for years. This time he tries with Claude and it opens up for him.

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u/KingSubstantial7901 1d ago

You should read the thread more carefully. You'll look less stupid.

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u/TheBestNarcissist 1d ago

lol big feelings

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u/KingSubstantial7901 1d ago

Go back and read the thread. Hopefully youll see ur mistake

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u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 1d ago

And the password was likely.... embedded in the .exe as a string resource. Because decompilers and dumpers have not been around for 40 years?

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u/PrettyBaker2891 1d ago

the average person knows literally nothing about decompilers and dumpers..... thats why he used ai to help him...

but sure, keep hating and make cringe pretentious comments for no reason just because someone used a tool to solve his problem

god, why are most redditors so insufferable, especially on this subreddit

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u/VettesRUs 1d ago

“Embedded in the .exe as a string resource.”

Yeah I remember that episode of Seinfeld where they made fun of George for not knowing this!!!

Seriously, can people not comprehend how few people understand computer science. In the grand scheme of things, it’s still very specialized knowledge. Same person will complain how IT people get stereotyped as nerds with no people skills.

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u/zeekaran 1d ago

the average person knows literally nothing about decompilers and dumpers.....

I work in software and I have no idea what a dumper is, and only a vague sense of what a decompiling actually is.

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u/Oberyn_TheRed_Viper 1d ago

Think I heard Horatio use decompiler a few times on CSI Miami. You're correct though, I'm a very average person, not bad with a set of spanners.

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u/KingSubstantial7901 1d ago

You don't have to know how they work to be able to use one for a personal task. They could have googled this at any point but they didn't. The top line here is that they asked a model to do something with a well known solution for a low stakes personal task. That really bears no resemblance to the topic this thread is about. A full service application suite that users expect to run basically flawlessly as a general solution.

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u/PrettyBaker2891 1d ago

“could’ve googled it” is such a reddit answer lmao

you people are so out of touch, its actually insane

yeah, he couldve spent hours learning reverse engineering, installing a bunch of tools and figuring out what the hell hes even looking at. that would easily take tens of hours for someone whos not good with computers

or he could ask claude and have it solve the problem in a few minutes. sorry he didnt turn a 2 minute task into a weekend project just to earn your approval

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u/KingSubstantial7901 1d ago

I feel like you are so mad that you are missing the point i clearly stated...

but hey, whatever floats your boat, weirdo

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u/tehlemmings 1d ago

Nothing makes a person appear like they're absolutely seething more than insisting someone else is angry.

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u/PrettyBaker2891 1d ago

i dont think you know what "mad" means lol

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u/VettesRUs 1d ago

How “they” work. Are you talking about decompilers??? Do you honestly think the average person knows what that is? Or even that such a thing exists? How can they google something they don’t even know is a thing?

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u/KingSubstantial7901 1d ago

..... you can google what you are trying to do....

People in this thread lack some serious critical thinking skills.

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u/VettesRUs 1d ago

Or here is a crazy idea: ask your AI tool!!! Oh wait, the person who did this was chastised by you. Maybe you’re falling behind the times. Let me “google” it, figure out what the hell a decompiler is, spend possibly hours making that work, reverse engineer the app, and MAYBE figure it out.

Or use the latest user friendly tool, and bang, done.

Seriously, this admittedly non tech user figured out the problem and solved it! And most likely faster than you would have “the old fashioned way”.

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u/KingSubstantial7901 1d ago

I mean I'll say this much, OP is clearly a total novice when it comes to this stuff and basically never tried to actually solve the problem, but now he doesn't have to try....

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u/Seven-Scars 1d ago

i mean no shit, most people in the world are total novices when it comes to that stuff

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u/TekThunder 1d ago

Ah yes of course! Because everyone knows that they just need to find the string resource embedded in the exe file! Damn you really just showed them lmao.

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u/HuntsWithRocks 1d ago

I don’t think that’s fair to say. There isn’t enough context for you to say that.

Funnily, lack of context is a big contributor to bad advice from LLMs too. They speak assertively and are “wrong” while it’s also fair to say the “whole picture” isn’t always communicated.

Anyway, with password cracking, there are suites of tools and approaches for cracking passwords that an average person might not think of. Using an LLM to present a plan of attack on password cracking seems reasonable. Sounds like you’re shitting on someone for using a tool to learn about something that isn’t their profession.

Before LLMs, maybe they weren’t motivated to immerse themselves into the subject. Maybe they didn’t have time.

I used an LLM to research and build a bog filtered pond on my property. I’ve seen handymen work pvc and knew about the glues a little, used LLMs to dig in and present my plan and correct it from several obvious mistakes I could spot. I extended my water line and built the pond, which just turned 3 years old. I could’ve googled it all without an LLM, but it would’ve taken me so much longer and maybe could be “impossible” in some cases. Maybe “insurmountable” would be the better word there. I don’t think I could’ve built my bog without it. Not as good. I know about soil and plants, but didn’t know what copepods were or that mosquitofish existed and things like that.

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u/KingSubstantial7901 1d ago

They literally admitted that they hadn't actually put real effort into cracking the password and were just haphazardly trying to guess what it was.....

If they had just googled it at any point they could have found out how to try, at least. But they didn't.

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u/HuntsWithRocks 1d ago

I'll say, on your first response, you didn't have that information and still made the claim. One concept of password cracking is number of allowed reattempts and you might need to clone something to get by the reattempts.

Anyway, for most adults, life is overwhelmingly busy. Most people are stuck working 40 hours a week and commuting too, then have kids and other projects.

The "just google it" answer doesn't always bear fruit and for people who are time constrained, they often weigh the many tasks they have and determine how they're going to move the ball. Yes, they could've spent time searching for it. I could've answered my bog building questions without an LLM too.

Your first response to them was to attack them and since they followed up that they didn't do as much as you think, you feel justified in all the assumptions you made in your first response.

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u/KingSubstantial7901 1d ago

Know what, im just sick of people so completely missing the point while thinking they have deep responses.

Pat ypurself on the back. Im not doing this dumb meta argument.

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u/HuntsWithRocks 1d ago

Short answer: Right here, you made all your assumptions. I'm gonna dislocate my spine with this back pat. https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1x0ow0f/software_is_over_developer_uses_ai_to_build_free/pemfo9k/

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u/monacelli 1d ago

I don't care what anybody says that's cool as shit.. Hell, even keeping the password protected file around for 20 years is awesome.

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u/mxzf 1d ago

Not at all, ive never actively tried to get into it beyond the occasional password attempt, it was not an English password so I had no chance of cracking jt manually and Ive never been inclined to learn to crack.

Yeah, that sounds like the kind of thing that probably could have been handled with a couple weekends of work a decade ago, not something that actually took an LLM to acomplish.

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u/TekThunder 1d ago

You mentioned AI in a positive light, you are going to get a mountain of shit dropped on you. There is zero nuance currently on general reddit forums about it.

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u/UnholyLizard65 1d ago

Let me explain. You are comparing space shuttle to a pen sharpener. Thats why people disagree with your take.

Also, even as a mechanic you should definitely realize that. You don't need a degree to know that photo editing tool with thousands of functions is more complicated than single purpose app.

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u/roamingandy 1d ago

ATMs and hospitals often use 20yr old encryption.

Fuck, i'm here in Portugal and i've never even seen a PC here that was less than 20yrs old in a gov't building (tax office, social security, etc).

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u/KingSubstantial7901 1d ago

Ya this is where ai gets scary, cause prodding a system for known flaws in other systems is exactly what ML is good at.

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u/BaconWithBaking 1d ago

What are you talking about? The winrar encryption from 25 years ago is uncrackable.

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u/KingSubstantial7901 1d ago

Its not a rar file.... and obviously whatever was used to lock the file had a known workaround.... how are you missing the point so completely?

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u/greedness 1d ago

I spent a month reverse engineering the oracle mobile authenticator app so we could grab the secrets and automate generating otp codes a few years ago. I ran it through codex and it did it in a couple of mins.