Wares
~ware1: An article of commerce.
~ware2: An immaterial asset or benefit, such as a service or personal accomplishment, regarded as an article of commerce.
The above mentioned were the real-world dictionary definition of the term 'Ware'.
According to the Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, the term ware; ~s; ~z mean:
(soft "wares") Pirated software distributed over the Internet. A warez site may also provide hackers with viruses and Trojans as well as tips, techniques and scripts for gaining illegal entry into networks and systems. It may also offer ways to cheat at online games. In other words, a fun site.
If not a crystal clear picture, you might have at least got a hang of the term "warez" now. There is no better way of explaining this in a lay-man approach as it can be compared to a Hollywood / Bollywood pirated movie.
A producer spends a huge amount of his money to produce a movie. Similarly, a Software company invests in their pet project to create an awesome application. The producer grants distribution rights to major companies to advertise their movies and the Distributors take care of the dirty work. The Software company gets in touch with their commercial agencies to advertise their new product and allocates Point of sale agencies. Before giving it to distributors, the producer organizes a Cine screening. There might be a 'pirate' sitting in the audience who slowly and politely records the movie and puts his DVD recorder to use and the movie may reach the gray market even before it releases. By the time the editors work on the trailers and mass advertising, the movie might be available in torrents and mass-down loaders will be working on it.
This is where the similarity between Bollywood and the Brotherhood ends. Before releasing their master app on the web site or creating a shareware, the software guys may introduce nag screens and other security constraints to ward off the software poachers. They may pay handsome figures to security companies to add high-level 256-bit encryption blah blah blah... to stop the crackers from breaking in to it. Finally, the product -either in a complete, shareware or a trial-ware form - will be released.
Rather than releasing a Key-gen, patch or a Crack separately, the crackers may reverse engineer the entire product, rewrite the code, re-compile and re-build it.
Yes! You heard it right. The entire application can be modified to work as and ho a cracker wants it to run. That means, not only will the the nag screens be removed, but also there might be a code written to do things that you may never have thought about.
So, while you are reading this blog, one or more pirated software that you might be using - or may be your pirated copy of Windows XP be involved in crashing a bank web site or your friend's system while you are chatting with her. Who knows!
