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Pirates Find Proper Way to Crack Vista's Activation Schema

Posted by Zonk on Monday March 03, @08:13AM
from the little-ants-can-fell-big-trees dept.
Microsoft Security Windows
El_Oscuro writes "A genuine crack for Windows Vista has been released by pirate group Pantheon. The exploit allows a pirated, non-activated installation of Vista (Home Basic/Premium and Ultimate) to be properly activated and made fully-operational. 'It seems that Microsoft has allowed large OEMs like ASUS to ship their products with a pre-installed version of Vista that doesn't require product activation — apparently because end users would find it too inconvenient.'"

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Firehose:Pirates crack Vista at last by El_Oscuro (1022477)
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Pirates Find Proper Way to Crack Vista's Activation Schema 25 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • Old News Crack (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tx (96709) on Monday March 03, @08:17AM (#22622494) Journal
    In other news, pirates have created a crack to prevent news from 4th March 2007 appearing a year later on /.

    Well we live in hope.

  • Is it worth cracking Vista? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jkrise (535370) on Monday March 03, @08:24AM (#22622540) Journal
    I remember a CNN news snippet on YouTube... it's just not worth pirating Vista, unless one is a hardcore masochist, of course.

  • ... But Windows STILL not dying... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PC and Sony Fanboy (1248258) on Monday March 03, @08:25AM (#22622548)
    Although this particular "activation" method has been around for awhile, it is interesting to see that microsoft never bothered to fix it.

    I can't believe that microsoft is still a lumbering software giant; notwithstanding their disdain for consumers (Turning off vista if it wasn't genuine ... even when it was!), they continue to make boatloads of money. This 'workaround' for activation is another example of their disdain for the end user; they're willing to accomodate the manufacturers in order to push an inferior software package onto the masses.

    It makes me feel like Henry Ford is running MS - 'you can have any OS you want, so long as it is VISTA'.

    I've personally decided to put the effort into getting my home computers running OSX (a very FUN project) so that my family can have the eye candy that is associated with MS without ... MS.
    (and yes, linux can be pretty... but I'm the only one that uses it!)

  • Fixed summary (Score:5, Funny)

    by sakdoctor (1087155) on Monday March 03, @08:25AM (#22622556) Homepage Journal
    It seems that Microsoft has allowed large OEMs like ASUS to ship their products with a pre-installed version of XP that doesn't require product activation -- apparently because end users would find using Vista too inconvenient.

  • SP1 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xenolith (538304) on Monday March 03, @08:28AM (#22622566) Homepage
    Since this article is a year old, no testing on SP1, I assume.

      • Re:What SP1? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Xenolith (538304) on Monday March 03, @08:56AM (#22622748) Homepage
        Yup. But the version MS was about to release contained updates to stop the more common hacks. This hack may have been one of them. There are other activation hacks out there that have been tested to work with SP1 RC.

  • Inconvenience (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rik Sweeney (471717) on Monday March 03, @08:28AM (#22622574) Homepage
    I don't know how Vista's activation works, but I imagine that you only have to type it in once. Surely they could have just asked the user to type in the key on the back of the DVD / CD case, and if they don't have a DVD / CD then to contact their OEM. Works for me.

    Unless of course Microsoft have done this on purpose to get more copies on Vista on the desktop...

    • Re:Inconvenience (Score:5, Interesting)

      by IBBoard (1128019) on Monday March 03, @09:11AM (#22622884) Homepage
      You probably would - you only typed it once for XP (unless you upgraded your machine, at which point XP thought it was a new machine and wanted re-activating). The problem with CD keys (from Microsoft's point of view) is that you can copy a key and hand it around, but you can't copy an activation code that needs to be confirmed by a remote machine.

      I'd rather have a single CD key than 35(?) characters I need to type in to the phone followed by 35(?) characters you have to type back in to your computer. I had to activate three XP laptops at work that were purchased specially for a project and that was a pain. Actually, no, I'd rather not have a CD key at all, but that's why I run Linux at home.

      One of the linked articles does cover an implicit acceptance of piracy in countries like Romania, mainly as a way to get people hooked on Windows before making them buy it (or just to keep OSS in check).

    • Re:Inconvenience (Score:4, Insightful)

      by transporter_ii (986545) * on Monday March 03, @09:16AM (#22622926) Homepage
      Yeah, Microsoft keeps locking it down, and then backing off on the lock-down right at the last moment. What we need is a crack to turn the lock down back on in full force, not to totally bypass WPA.

      Back in the day when there wasn't anything else, pirating copies of Windows was OK. Now that there are good choices, lock that bitch down hard and when you hear people PMS, tell them there is no WPA in Linux.

      Transporter_ii

  • old news. 365 days old. (Score:5, Informative)

    by leuk_he (194174) on Monday March 03, @08:37AM (#22622632) Homepage
    Note that the article is dated 4 March, exactly 365 days ago. SOmehow the editor does not have 29 feb and though he was living at tomorrow.

    THis particular crack has/will be defeated by sp1.

    • Re:old news. 365 days old. (Score:5, Informative)

      by baadger (764884) on Monday March 03, @10:32AM (#22623728)
      > This particular crack has/will be defeated by SP1.

      Yes this particular crack (by Paradox) has been fixed in SP1. The thing is, SP1 only blacklists some very specific 'soft mods' (Boot loader replacement designed to emulate an OEM issued BIOS SLIC table and trick Vista into accepting your machine as an OEM product). It is widely known that there are still many others out there, even ones dating from the middle of last year, that work just fine with SP1.

  • "Dear pirates" (Score:5, Funny)

    by joaommp (685612) on Monday March 03, @08:40AM (#22622648)
    "Please do not crack software and publish the crack on the net. It hurts my employer's feelings.

    Thank you."

  • In other related news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by xtracto (837672) on Monday March 03, @08:50AM (#22622712) Journal
    Another group has published an undocumented way to bypass the adult verification in the new Leisure Suit Larry game by pressing ALT+X.

    How do these guys learn this stuff??

  • Amusing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NickCatal (865805) on Monday March 03, @09:00AM (#22622774) Homepage
    I always find it amusing that MSFT says that Vista is the least cracked OS they have made to date... They fail to see that most people who pirate OSes actually intend on using that OS and are as likely to want vista as anyone else...

  • So Vista's now available free? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Malevolent Tester (1201209) * on Monday March 03, @09:08AM (#22622852) Journal
    Just need to wait a few more months and hopefully Microsoft will start paying people to use it.
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