Luigi Auriemma

Luigi when doing your work on Steam/Half-Life did you come across a way to back up cd-keys?

do you mean where are located the cdkeys?
They are all in the registry in locations like Software\Valve\Half-Life\Settings\Key or Software\Valve\CounterStrike\Settings\CDKey and so on

There's probably no cd-keys stored on your machine if you are completely using Steam to play all the games. The keys would be stored on Steam servers if they are registered to a Steam account. And when you connect with your Steam client, the server will grant the games your it's allowed access to. And these games would be the ones for which you registered your keys.

But if Steam is out of the picture, they are most likely on the local machine (in the registry) as Luigi posted.

actually if its only steam based, there is way to find out cd-keys.
get some simple packet editor or packet capture program.
something like commview (i like this best), etherreal, etherpeek ..etc.
..i have done it only once, so i dont remember exactly.

well. first boot up game. then open server list. its best if u run your game in window, so u can quickly start capturing.
-start capture and quickly join some random server. once u r in the server, stop capture. then simply go through those packets. cd-key is there and its not encrypted.

you can also try the ''string'' filter for ''cd-key'' or for ''cdkey'' If im correct then packet contained the word ''cdkey'' or ''cd-key''.

How and why i know this ? ...I have some steam accounts that r not really mine ;) ..and i managed to lose my own cd-key lol

...hope this helped.

Awesome tip sethioz B). I will have to check that out. I'm suprised it would be sent in clear text (at least for official VALVe games)...one would think theyd make it more secure than that

well i couldnt get cd-key for half-life (just didnt see the packet anywhere) .. but i did got it for CSS for sure...i remember that it was sent in plain text.