# Zero-Knowledge cracking of a 1983 Apple II Hardware Copy Protection — Inbar Raz

**URL:** <https://discourse.ossbase.org/t/zero-knowledge-cracking-of-a-1983-apple-ii-hardware-copy-protection-inbar-raz/1213>\
**Category:** 2025 talks / workshops\
**Tags:** talk, hack.lu, 2026\
**Created:** [October 7, 2026, 8:52am UTC](https://discourse.ossbase.org/t/zero-knowledge-cracking-of-a-1983-apple-ii-hardware-copy-protection-inbar-raz/1213 "2026-10-07T08:52:50Z")\
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**Author:** ![system](https://discourse.ossbase.org/uploads/default/original/1X/4713f3d4fec85f7513775fc2dd36f548a49f8faa.jpeg) [@system](https://discourse.ossbase.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [October 7, 2026, 8:52am UTC](https://discourse.ossbase.org/t/zero-knowledge-cracking-of-a-1983-apple-ii-hardware-copy-protection-inbar-raz/1213/1 "2026-10-07T08:52:51Z")

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**Join us at hack.lu 2026 — [Info & Registration](https://2026.hack.lu/info/)**

**Duration:** 30 min  
  
**Type:** Talk  
  
**Speakers:** Inbar Raz

**Abstract**

I have cracked HUNDREDS of copy-protected games and other software in my youth, but all of it was on the IBM PC x86 platform. When a fellow retro-computing collector found a hardware-dongle copy-protected historic Hebrew software for the Apple IIe from 1983, I jumped on the opportunity even though I knew absolutely NOTHING about the computer, its architecture, or operating system. In this talk I’ll walk you through my learning process and figuring out things as I go, on my journey to find the copy protection and crack it.

**Description**

I’ll walk the audience through the steps of tackling the problem - understanding what I know (very little) and what I don’t know (a whole lot), looking for the tools, creating my own tools, figuring out the Apple IIe boot process and software loading, reversing old-style (no LLM!), finding the protection, bypassing it in the emulator, and later in the disk image. I’ll then talk about my efforts to recreate the dongle itself. I will demo on stage parts of the process.

[View on pretalx](https://pretalx.com/hack-lu-2026/talk/ZLPNRA/)

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_[View the full topic](https://discourse.ossbase.org/t/zero-knowledge-cracking-of-a-1983-apple-ii-hardware-copy-protection-inbar-raz/1213)._