So, after successful authentication that is verified by Steam or Origin, Denuvo then patches your binary with specific codepaths that will ONLY work on your specific processor. Denuvo definitely has put a lot of research into this, I would not be surprised if they're working directly with Intel. Some of them are tiny, like different timings of an opcode in certain situations. There are a lot of slight differences and weird quirks in how different processor revisions operate. To give you an idea of how many different revisions / specs there are for a single processor model, check this out.

Two i5s with the exact same model numbers, but manufactured on different dates, can have different revisions, like bug fixes or small optimizations. It's not just what processor you have, but what revision it is. What do I mean by processor environment? It's basically any slight differences you may have with your processor. However, Denuvo's servers have at least dozens (if not hundreds or more) of variants for each function. Then Denuvo stubs out this function during the build process.Įssentially, Denuvo protected binaries come with some parts empty, that must be downloaded from the Denuvo servers after successful authentication. What Denuvo does for these functions is that it generates at least dozens of different versions that are functionally identical, but each codepath is specifically formulated to work only in one processor environment. It should only be run once, so making it slower doesn't really impact overall performance.

For example, this may be a function that initializes the engine. Developers must integrate their code with denuvo, including marking non-performance-impacting but essential functions for Denuvo's obfuscation. So what's the magic behind Denuvo? Environment dependent obfuscation.įirst of all, Denuvo is NOT a shrink wrap anti tamper system. However, I think this is the most crucial technique of denuvo, and why it has been so hard to crack. This post is just my observations from attempting to analyze denuvo, and it is certainly just one technique out of the N that it has and uses. Please note: No one (other than people working at denuvo) really knows how it works 100%.

Denuvo crack status 2017