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Microsoft

Nokia Engineer Shows How To Pirate Windows 8 Metro Apps, Bypass In-app Purchases 268

Posted by Soulskill from the internet-never-forgets dept.
MrSeb writes "The principal engineer for Nokia's WP7 and WP8 devices, Justin Angel, has demonstrated, in rather frank detail, how to pirate Windows 8 Metro apps, how to bypass in-app purchases, and how to remove in-game ads. These hacks aren't exactly easy, but more worryingly they're not exactly hard either. Angel shows that turning a trial version of a Metro app into the full version — i.e. pirating an app — is scarily simple. It's just a matter of downloading an open-source app and changing an XML attribute from 'Trial' to 'Full.' Likewise, a quick change to a XAML file can remove an app's ads. Bypassing in-app purchases is a little trickier, involving some reverse engineering of some DLLs and and decryption of database files, but Angel still makes it look fairly easy. Angel gives himself one million credits in Soulcraft, an RPG game — something that would cost you over a thousand dollars, if you performed a legitimate in-app purchase. Angel also demonstrates a way to bypass in-app purchases in WinJS (Metro/JavaScript) apps, by injecting scripts into IE10 (the rendering engine for WinJS apps). It's easy to blame Microsoft for this, but isn't this really an issue that is intrinsic to all installed applications? The fact is, Windows 8 Metro apps are stored on your hard drive — and this means that you have access to the code and data. Hex editors, save game editors, bypassing Adobe's 30-day trials by replacing DLL files, pirating Windows 8 apps — these are all just different incarnations of the same attack vectors."

Comment iOS6 (Score 1) 188

by XanC (#41696623) Attached to: User Tracking Back On iOS 6

Is there anything about Safari on iOS6 that doesn't suck? Particularly egregious is the fact that it caches POST responses. Yes, you read that right. I don't know what kind of brain damage leads somebody to believe that's an acceptable thing to do.

Comment Drug test the final standard? (Score 5, Insightful) 482

by XanC (#41114511) Attached to: Lance Armstrong and the Science of Drug Testing

I don't think anyone has ever believed that passing a drug test mean the person was clean for sure. Why do they store samples for X number of years in order to re-test them in the future, with better technology? It's because if it's found out later that somebody was doping, then his results are invalid.

If we find out some other way besides a drug test that somebody was doping, then his results are invalid.

Comment Re:a bit sensational headline (Score 1) 769

by XanC (#40809897) Attached to: Koch Bros Study Finds Global Warming Is Real And Man-Made

But conservatives and liberals seem to be on the opposite side of this divide when it comes to economics. Liberals believe more taxes == more revenue. And that there are never any unintended consequences to, say, Obamacare, which feed back into the system and cause weird effects.

In fact, it would seem that conservatives believe it's difficult/impossible to completely understand the behavior of complex systems, while liberals believe that regulation and rules and laws, of which more is better, always have exactly the effect they expect.

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It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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