SecuROM Again...

SecuROM is commercial protection from Sony
DADC. The similarities between SecuROM and SafeDisc suggest that
SafeDisc is probably based on SecuROM, and that SafeDisc's creators
simply improved SecuROM . This is suggested by the presence of the
files CMS 1 6 .DLL , CMS_95.DLL, or CCMS_NT.DLL on the
SecuROM-protected CDs. Like SafeDisc, SecuROM is in continuous
development.

SecuROM's protection is based on the same principle as SafeDisc.
Though it has been used to protect many games and programs, including
Forsaken, Descent, FreeSpace, FIFA 99, Alpha Centauri, Machines, and
the famous Diablo 2, I won't describe it in detail because it is being
used less and less. The short story is that some SecuROM data is
encoded in an EXE file, which is only correctly decoded once the
original CD is inserted. Special copying equipment is required to
produce a SecuROM-protected CD.

While it's not easy to crack SecuROM's protection, it's certainly
not impossible. It's slightly easier to remove SecuROM than it is to
remove SafeDisc because only some of the data is encoded, and because
its decoding routine and protection system is somewhat simpler.
Basically, the memory dumper that saves the EXE file to disc after
correct decoding can be used for decoding, as with SafeDisc.
(Naturally, this can also be done manually in a debugger, but it would
be slightly more time-consuming.) Note that SecuROM, like SafeDisk, was
upgraded in its latest versions.

You can find a SecuROM decoder on the Internet that is able to start
programs from a one-to-one CD copy. On the other hand, it isn't easy to
make such a copy: Its creation may take several hours, and the result
is far from certain.

If you start a SecuROM-protected program from an original CD, you
can dump it using the latest version of ProcDump. While developers
should consider this cracking possibility, it would be even better if
SecuROM itself concentrated on tackling this flaw.
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I also found out that SecuROM disables a dll used by Process Explorer (A Microsoft Sysinternals process monitor), which means that no one can look at exactly what SecuROM is doing while it is active in your system. I found this particularly interesting, seeing as it was one of the programs used to uncover the malicious rootkit that was XCP (another Sony copy protection product).