Hackers finally breach Denuvo's impenetrable defences

The seemingly impervious Denuvo security solution has finally been cracked, with pirates having now breached its defences on two separate occasions with two distinct methods.

Denuvo is the DRM solution that frustrated one prominent Chinese hacker group attempting to crack Just Cause 3 to the point that one of its members proclaimed, "according to current trends in the development of encryption technology, in two years time I'm afraid there will be no free games to play in the world."

The fact that PC games using Denuvo - like Just Cause 3, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Rise of the Tomb Raider - had resisted piracy for so long after launch was, the company said, "almost unprecedented in the games industry." Now, though, Denuvo's touted resilience has been undermined.

According to a report on Vice Gaming, a 19 year-old Bulgarian hacker known as "Voksi" managed to crack id Software's Doom with a workaround that involved the game's playable demo. The solution exploited a weakness in Denuvo's security that, "viewed the demo and full game interchangeably," allowing the full product to be accessed for free.

Voksi's workaround ultimately led to a "legitimate crack" from a hacking group known as "Conspiracy," which managed to remove Denuvo from Rise of the Tomb Raider entirely.

Both loopholes have since been closed, but Voksi claimed, "The damage is done... 650,000 unauthorized pirated copies were able to [run] with my bypasser and partial crack... The most breaking news of all is that Denuvo allowed 650,000 pirates to breach their servers for 3 days. And they call themselves the most secure company?"