SecuROM

One of the logos used by SecuROM

General Information

SecuROM is the name of a copy protection system from Sony DADC (specifically their Austrian branch) that was used between the late 90s to mid 2010s. It was one of was one of the most popular forms of DRM of its era and is found on games from all over the world. Including some Macintosh ones.

The DRM evolved a lot of throughout the years and for Redump.info purposes come in two versions, Disc check based and online activation based, both in turn having several subtypes. Libcrypt, which was based on the same technology as the early versions of SecuROM and developed alongside it. Is covered by its own page.

Identification

Disc check SecuROM

Comes in two versions one based on non-standard Subchannel data and another based on DPM info. Neither has any associated files loose on disc and can instead be identified using BoS, PID (Often one has to install the game and scan the install folder) or metadata found at the very tail end of the PVD Sector.

As a rule of thumb:

• SecuROM up to v4.76 uses subchannel protection.
• SecuROM v4.76 to v5.00 can use either subs or DPM.
• SecuROM v5.00+ uses DPM protection.
• SecuROM DVDs always use DPM protection.

Subchannel based SecuROM can also be identified by the presence of a so called "mode flip" sector at the end of the disc which manifests as an EDC error in Redumper (Not considered one so not added to the field) and the DPM based one by the distinct square wave of the DPM (see MDS dumping guide for more info).

Online Activation SecuROM

SecuROM later offered an online activation version of the DRM to their lineup. Components of which include:

• SecuROM Product Activation (PA)
• SecuROM Content Activation (Also known as SecuROM SLL in Redump)
• SecuROM Data File Activation (DFA)
• SecuROM Release control (RC)
• SecuROM Matroschka

These components are modular and not necessarily found together. They are sometimes also paired with other DRM such as Origin, Games For Windows Live and SolidShield. Most can be identified using BoS and some companies such as EA made use of their own custom version of them.

Dumping

Disc check SecuROM (Subchannel)

Dump it like a normal disc. Different versions of SecuROM use different amount of Subchannel sectors and should look like this

• Pre-v3 - 216
• v3 - 90
• v4 - 99
• post-v4 - 11

Any dumps with SecuROM should be checked carefully to ensure that the "SecuROM data" section contains an accurate number of sectors and if not (manifested as a Scheme: Unknown in the Redumper logs), ask dumper to try again and if it still fails. Try a different drive and/or DIC (Note that Discs with 99 SecuROM sectors dumped by DIC may have an erroneous offset of -59 reported initially in _disc.txt, followed by the correct offset of -647. Any DIC SecuROM discs with reported offset -59 should be carefully checked as a result)

Disc check SecuROM (DPM)

For Redump: Dump it like a normal disc.

For a working dump: MDS is required so see the MDS dumping guide.

Online Activation SecuROM

Dump it like a normal disc. PA servers are still up as of this writing while games with RC needs to be manually activated using the SecuROM website.

Additional Information

Under very rare conditions BOS can detect a disc as having "SecuROM (very old, v3 or less)" despite the DRM not being present

Some SecuROM discs might show subcode desyncs in the logs, usually on sectors near the start of the disc where the protection information is stored. This does not affect the final hash though.