system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do hackers create keygens for products that have been out hours?

A. How do they create them at all?
B. How do they do it so fast?
gpt
The cracking community is quite competitive. Getting your hands on something new and providing a keygen for it first is what gains you status.

These guys are talented. They get their hands on the program ASAP and start digging, using programs that help you understand the structure of the software. They're looking for parts of the program that have to do with verifying keys. They can develop a patch that removes that behavior, or, if the key actually decrypts the program for install, they'll try to crack it as a password. They either look at how the key gets analyzed, or they'll try to figure out how they're generated.