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SP1 Unsuccessful in Preventing Vista Hacks
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Monday February 11, @08:38AM
from the oh-my-god-i'm-so-shocked dept.
from the oh-my-god-i'm-so-shocked dept.
"The other A. N. Other" writes "It seems that Microsoft has been unsuccessful with SP1 in preventing hackers from turning a pirated, non-genuine copy of Vista into genuine copies that pass activation. The article initially looked at two of the most popular hacks (OEM BIOS hack and the grace timer hack) but after a little digging ZDNet were able to transform a non-genuine install into a genuine one. 'After a few minutes of searching the darker corners of the Internet and a few seconds in the Command Prompt I was able to fool Windows into thinking that it was genuine.'"
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Firehose:SP1 unsuccessful in preventing Vista hacks by Anonymous Coward
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Black Screen of Death... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Black Screen of Death... (Score:5, Informative)
You know, it's funny... I've often found it easier to crack a piece of software than it is to track down my legitimate license. I can imagine does that with VIsta. If I were running a legitimate version of Vista and changed my hardware (or whatever causes Vista to require a to require you to reregister), I'd sooner install a crack than spend any amount of time on the phone with Microsoft.
-matthew
Re:Black Screen of Death... (Score:5, Funny)
Copyright infringement, OTOH, is something else entirely.
Get your pirate code right! (Score:5, Funny)
As a representative of the PADL (Pirate Anti-Defamation League), I protest to your inclusion of rape in the list of activities characteristic of pirates. According to Captain John Phillip's Pirate Code, [wikipedia.org]
Please cease and desist from further defamation of pirates. Or prepare to be pillaged yourself! (And note that the article only applies to the prudent Woman.) YAAAR!
Re:Get your pirate code right! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Black Screen of Death... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Black Screen of Death... (Score:5, Funny)
Just rotate it 90 degrees, poof.
This is nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
No surprise there... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to say the other post about "the ones that steal it making it harder for everyone else" is one of the most naive and ignorant post I have ever seen.
It isn't "stealing" it's copyright violation, and you have fairly naive view of human behavior.
Relax there are more important things to worry about than some crappy OS.
How is MS supposed to win? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone think MS really cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
In an age of copy protected floppies and copy protection on games and virtually every type of software, MS still shipped DOS and Win 3.1 unprotected. Friends would install it, and even geeks would go, wow, a GUI that works and I can even multi-task my DOS applications.
Corporation and distributor fraud has been at the heart of the MS movement for Geniune. Yes, they are stupid about it, as WGA has screwed users more than it ever should have with XP and Vista, but prior to WGA, even if you were a legit OEM MFR of computers you often had a 50% chance of getting pirate copies of Win9x/Win2K and especially Office.
I know from being an OEM and buying through distribution channels that 50% of the product that came through the door was not legit. It was so bad that even employees at some of the larger vendors, would place your MS software orders to their 'friends' and invoice it separately without your knowledge or the knowledge of some of the distributors.
This also wasn't from fly by night wholesalers. Our corporate IT people also had problems, even orders from companies like CDW and others had a large chance of being fake.
So MS added WGA and activation, this cut down the problem, but put a strain on legitimate users. MS would have been served to just put more monitoring and pressure in the distribtution channels, but again there are retailers and OEMs that would take advantage shady 'good' deals, and the customers would again be using forged copies, not even knowing that their local shop was screwing over people.
SP1 lightens WGA, and MS has internal plans to further lighten WGA on the websites and for allowing updates. They are looking into taking the burden of WGA off the end-user. I would look for more OEM tools and OEM activation, and keeping Corporate IT activation systems intact and WGA for consumers going away eventually.
This is a good thing and now SlashDot makes the article read like Vista is 'hackable' in a 'bad' way, instead of a 'good' way.
Also remember MS has already put out enough copies of Vista, that they probably don't care about the few *nix users hacking it for a VM or dual install, nor even the OSX Mac base.
Counting the entire sales history of Macs as total base, and the entire *nix installation base, Vista is still millions of copies ahead and still growing, and THIS is even if you only count the retail copies sold, not even the OEM portion which is substantially even larger.
MS can afford for people to Hack Vista, especially when there are cliches in the Mac community that love the hardware, but like Vista better than OSX and use it as their primary OS and great if they hack and install Vista, and find out that it runs better on Mac hardware than OSX. MS has a win win, even if the people don't like Vista, and it didn't cost MS anything for the % that did prefer Vista. (See online articles comparing Vista to Leopard or running native Intel binaries under OSX compared to Vista. (Adobe products and OpenGL games are great selling points for Vista, all running faster under Vista than OSX on the same machine.)
Re:Here we go again... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Here we go again... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's been working well for me for years, and I see no reason to stop. They have my money, I have their software, and I get to use what I paid for. Problem? Didn't think so.
Re:Here we go again... (Score:5, Interesting)
I started doing this a year or two back when the latest and greatest copy protection broke a game that I had legitimately purchased. It wouldn't run at all. No matter what I did it told me I didn't have the disc. So I grabbed the no-CD patch and had no trouble with it.
Ever since then I've made it a habit to crack/patch every game I purchase. Not only do I no longer have to dig through my discs to find the right one when I want to play, but it seems to me that the games run better too.
All these assorted copy protection schemes only affect those of us who actually pay for the software. The folks who are pirating the stuff are already bypassing it all anyway, so they never get inconvenienced at all.
Re:Here we go again... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Here we go again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well... it's more like from the beginning, not in the end.
Basically its just another example of how even elegant code is unnecessarily costly when used to stupid purpose. Trying to prop up a 1989 business model with the likes of WGA, DRM, etc is just stupid. Find another business model. It isn't like there is some worldwide shortage of them.
Re:Here we go again... (Score:5, Interesting)
That is the funny part. WGA is a solid failure, yet Microsoft will not give up on it. It only get's in the way of legit users and eats up processor cycles for no useful reason. Yet they insist on making life hell for everyone that is a legit user while all their attempts no not even bother the stolen software users.
It's getting as bad as Games, Legit copies are more of a PITA than a cracked copy. Which is why as soon as I buy a game, I go searching for the cracks, no-cd patches, etc... to give me back control of the game I bought.
BTW, the cool part of the XP WGA crack, I can reinstall XP on my machines at will without calling Msft. I simply use the crack to insert the COA sticker's number inot XP and it instantly becomes that copy, WGA is happy, the "you must register" crap goes away. I have a better experience.
Come on.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Curious tactics anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
If people actually have to buy Windows and Office for what MS is charging for them, maybe they'll stop for a second and finally realise what it means to enter into business with a monopoly: high prices and low quality.
There's no doubt in my mind, from the sample of people and businesses that I know, that they'd take a long hard look at Linux if they were unable to pirate MS products so easily.
Re:Curious tactics anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Curious tactics anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Curious tactics anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How does this work? (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, some OEM versions don't need activation, all they need is the correct SLIC table embedded in the bios to tell vista that it is a OEM computer and a OEM product key.
With that you will not need activation and you will be Genuine. So you are right it does not pass activation, just like the VLK keys of XP don't pass activation, because it is not needed.
There are tons of sites about it
On a side note if you buy a computer that is OEM Vista Home Premium you can use the SLIC table in your BIOS and get Vista Ultimate, just by changing your key. Once again no activation
Re:WHAT!?!?! (Score:4, Funny)
Of course he didn't.
He was frist!!