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Cracking Adobe Type on Call 
The Real Deal

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From: The Grand Poobah!
The bad news about Type On Call (TOC) is below. It's now getting boring listening to people expecting any simple crack to any of the TOC disks. The same serial number to the same disk, to the same font at any given moment willl *never* work.

Here's why.

As I actually worked on the project to develop the original TOC product, may I shed a little reality on the situation? Originally, in TOC 1.0, there were *five* different CD masters created. Each of these had its own set of algorythms for en decrypting the data on the CD.  For a start, it was *not developed by Adobe (the en/decrypt) but by a Canadian company called the AND group (yeah Canada!).

The idea is simple in its complexity.  Each of the five algorythms is used to generate a unique CD key (fourteen letters of the format 'xxx xxx xxxx xxxx') which is printed on the CD case.  This key is in turn used during the installation process to indicate to the version of the algorythm built
into the CDEV which of the five masters it is.

When a users wants a font, they open this control panel (which generates a new key every time you restart the OS based upon the version of the algorythm and the CD key) and gives the customer key displayed in it to Adobe (or whomever is selling the fonts as their agent).  The operator punches this number into a 4D database where another version of the algorythm generates the appropriate unlocking code (for that specific instance of the key in the CDEV at the particular boot time) for a given font, font family, package or even the whole CD-ROM.

Once these codes are entered into the CDEV, it retains the fact that it has a right to access certain areas of the CD.  If the user loses or trashes it, they have to install a new CDEV, call Adobe, get the codes again and reenter them.  The original codes obtained the first time (when the fonts are purchased) will not work subsequently during the new installation of the same CD-ROM because the key in the CDEV will be different and not match the original unlocking codes.

So you can see that even if you had a copy of TOC cut from the same master as someone who had codes they could give you, it would do *no* good because your CDEV customer keys would not match (unless you restart around a million times and got lucky). To further make it difficult, Adobe upped the number of masters to 10 in TOC v2.0 and 20 in TOC v3.0 (v4.0 uses a
different system and is incompatible with versions 1-3).

Fortunately when we were working on the original project, we left a hacking loophole (yes, intentionally).  Take the instance of someone buying version 1.0 and 100 typefaces.  They would have to type in 100 codes right?  Right.  Unfortunately, when version 2.0 ships, the customer either has to use both CDs, or get the 100 codes necessary for the 2.0
CDEV and reenter them (along with any new codes for the new version).  As typing 14 place random alpha codes is prone to mistake at the best of times, we didn't want to have to introduce additional overhead.  Wouldn't it be nice if the user could buy the upgrade and copy the old codes from their previous CDEV...

Herein lies the hack. We did not write the updater to copy the actual *codes* themselves, but instead copy the *rights of access*.  What this means is that if you can get a CDEV for version 1.0 or 2.0 that has had codes added, you can run the updater from the newer version (i.e. 2.0 or 3.0 - 4.0 is useless as it uses a different system) and it will copy the
rights of access into the new CDEV.  So, find someone with a TOC version 1.0 or 2.0 and copy their CDEV.  Get your hands on TOC 3.0, run the updater and you will have access to the same fonts they did on your own TOC CD-ROM.

The only catch is that it only works with *one* older CDEV, so choose your pillage wisely.  Of course, you could run the updater on several different old CDEVs and simply rename the new ones "TOC1", "TOC2", "TOC3, etc. and use them all as needed.  Alternatively, if someone has a TOC v1.0 CD-ROM, you could post your customer key and I could create a completely unlocked CDEV I could post back. It would not work on the 1.0 version but could be used with the updater trick outlined above.

A few pearls of *real* knowledge admist the crapola...

-The Grand Poobah!

Conclusion:
The Adobe Type on Call CD's are hackable because there are a few control panels floating around that have all the unlock codes in them.  But these hacked control panels only work with certian CD's and you have to be fortunate to own that cd.  But some people have it.  So look to see if you have that matching disk.  Almost like a lottery ticket eh?

©1998 MacAddict Hacker