The Anti-virus Times

At that point I had already been reading about software cracking for two months. I knew very little but decided to try to crack the program. I wouldn't be able to buy it anyway.

So everyone thought that I had kind of "repaired" it. The program stopped working and I fixed it; job well done, right?

https://habrahabr.ru/post/86394

The company was collaborating closely with the university and could easily find out that some kind-hearted student had come up with a cracked version of their product. And that's exactly what happened.

Almost immediately after that I received this email:

You have already sufficiently exposed yourself on various forums. It’s only a matter of time before we determine your current location, and it won't take long.

Less than a week passed, and I received another hellish email that contained no comments, but my home address was indicated, including the flat number. That's it, there’s no way out, I thought and crossed myself. Now my options were few. Only the heavens knew what was in store for me. To say that I was scared goes without saying.

Luckily, I had a place I could get away to, and I spent almost two months there relaxing and felt completely worry-free. And it all began to seem like a distant nightmare. But, as soon as I came back, my family members told me that some people (two men in plain clothes) had asked for me on several occasions. When they asked the visitors why they were looking for me, the men said that they "need to talk to him. He'll understand". But I didn't. It didn't look like a police inquiry, and that they were mobsters was even less likely.

Everything comes to an end sooner or later, I thought; I came home and decided to turn myself in. After all, prisoners of war usually don't get shot, right?

But first I made one last attempt to redeem myself. I composed a message to SeaTech’s support service, explaining who I was and why I did what I did; I described my situation. Then a miracle happened. Probably, they were in a good mood or my message was reviewed by a compassionate support employee, but in the reply they asked me about the deadline for my thesis. I answered that I had as many as three years ahead of me, and in response they sent me a license file for my home PC for that period of time. In return, I wrote that I'd never do a thing like that again. And that was it; an alien spaceship arrived and rescued me. Yes, these things do happen, but I never thought that such a simple way out could exist in a situation of this sort.