The video game Hogwarts Legacy: Hogwarts Legacy has finally given way. A crack was announced on February 23.
Two weeks. That’s the time it took to crack the protections of Hogwarts Legacy: Hogwarts Legacy. Released on February 10, 2023 on PC and PlayStation and Xbox consoles, the famous video game from the franchise Harry Potter should quickly spread through pirate distribution channels, BitTorrent and direct download from hosts.
These anti-piracy protections are commonly called DRM, for Digital Rights Management. These are technologies intended to prevent unintended copying and modification. DRM developed in particular with the video game market in the 2000s, and caused a race with pirates, who have since been trying to break them.
The hacking of Hogwarts Legacy: Hogwarts Legacy was reported on February 23, 2023, including on Reddit and social media. From what emerges from this story, the hack would be the work of a single person, a Russian who would be around 23 years old. Her real identity is unknown, but she signs her actions under the alias Empress.
Empress hacker vs Denuvo DRM
In the middle of the warez scene, the reputation of Empress is now at the forefront. Previously known as C000005, she started making waves in mid-2017 by taking on another video game, Total War Warhammer 2, along with six other groups of hackers. That’s when she started attacking Denuvo.
About JK Rowling
The editorial staff received the video game Hogwarts Legacy to test it before its release. JK Rowling did not originate it and was not involved in its design. We reject the active transphobia of the author, who finances anti-trans associations, which endanger the lives of trans people.
Behind this name hides a formidable anti-piracy tool, designed by an Austrian company since 2014 – this one is pleased to be ” the world leader in game protection and anti-piracy technology “. The tool is used on over a thousand titles, the official site says. Denuvo works with all major gaming services, like Steam and the Epic Games Store.
And terrible, Denuvo is: its system ” assigns a unique authentication token to each copy of a game, a kind of license shaped by various indicators like hardware identification. As Denuvo integrates with the code of a game, one cannot crack it once and for all. Each title presents a unique challenge “, noted Wired in mid-2022.
In short, hackers hate it and studios love it. This is why Empress has seen its notoriety jump in the middle. ” The woman who demolishes the toughest DRMs in video games “, headlined our colleagues. On Reddit, there is also a long development whose title sketches an unlikely portrait of this very mysterious hacker:
” The Rise of Empress — How one woman turned the pirate world upside down, waged a solo war against the entire video game industry (and won), went power mad, started a messianic cult based on a high school-level ethos and faked his own arrest to antagonize his rivals and critics “. Holy profile.
And this hacker, who thinks she’s a sectarian guru, which overcomes all video game protections, has obviously managed to bend the latest version of Denuvo’s anti-piracy tool. Protection that is used on Hogwarts Legacy. To date, there has been no report of another hacker or team having achieved a similar feat with this title.
Just as it is difficult to pierce the mysteries around the identity of the creator of Bitcoin, who uses the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, the veil remains very opaque around Empress, to which are added rumors and fantasies. Nevertheless, the reality remains: the protections designed by Denuvo give way, sooner or later, and the messages are always signed by Empress.
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