Crap! Not again
Vista activation cracked by brute force – TheInquirer.net:
It look like Microsoft’s unhackable OS activation malware has been hacked.
There is an active thread at the Keznews forums, and a summary on its main page about the crack.
It is a simple brute force attack, dumb as a rock that just tries keys. If it gets one, you manually have to check it and try activation. Is is ugly, takes hours, is far from point and click, but it is said to work.
The method of attack has got to be quite troubling for MS on many grounds. The crack is a glorified guesser, and with the speed of modern PCs and the number of outstanding keys, the 25-digit serials are within range. The biggest problem for MS? If this gets widespread, people will start activating legit keys that are owned by other people.
This is ugly for MS, and if it allows you to take back your legit keys, how long do you think it will take before people catch on to the fact that you can call in and hijack already purchased keys once you generate one that someone else activated?.
Not really…
What can be MADE by man, can be UNmade by man…
It has always amazed me that If 1 person can do something, they Think No one else will be able to do it/copy it/…
what is interesting, is as the USA was changing the face or our currency from the OLD to NEW…No one figured that the computer-criminal world would notice…They LOVED it.. As they didnt take the OLD out of curculation, it was Easy to pass Phony Bills…
Ha ha…
With the size of the windows key, the mathematical possibilities are huge. Sure, someone could get lucky but its really insane for the amount of time needed to generate one key. Its possible, yep. Just not really worth it.
Now, should it become more prevalent. MS knows which keys they’ve already generated and have in the marketplace so on the next run of keys they ship out they just drop the valid range. Meaning, lower valid key range – lower chance of finding one that might work. 60 days to generate a key becomes 120 days. I don’t think most people are going to run a machine for 120 days just to get a $199 copy of Vista (which they are complaining about being crap in the first place).
This is just the first crack in the dam. It’s only a matter of time before Vista is just as wide open as XP.
No wonder Microsoft uses Macs for their inhouse promotion and print shop.
Best Picture/Caption EVAR!
I am not a bit surprised. A 25-character key with each character having 36 possible values ( I think it is just composed of upper case alphabet characters and numbers) shouldn’t be too difficult to crack, and it obviously isn’t.
The activation keys are randomly selected I am sure but if they are selected out of a finite pool then it is the perfect scenario for a brute force attack to take advantage of.
I agree that the BIG problem is the one that John alluded to regarding valid owners getting burned by someone hijacking their key. That is ugly because obviously MS is tracking the validity of the key and allowing activation based on it being part of a sold software pool. If sold, then activate. Therefore a hijacked key ends up burning a valid user. I wonder what MS plans to do to remedy this?
This has always been the problem with DRM or WPA or whatever. By trying to protect your software from being sold at bargain basement prices by the black market or being shared for free you end up alienating and pissing off valid and law-abiding consumers with the restrictions being placed on them.
That’s partly why OSS looks like it has a very bright future. MS should give up on Windows at this point, they should stick with the XBox, Zune, PDA OS’s and other future products. Even the Office products are threatened by cheaper alternatives. They have enough money to anything they want… give up on the OS for crying out loud.
~C
*yawn* Duh.
#9 – pedro
But he’s not joking…
How long until somebody starts figuring out how to actually send a key for validation to MS despite the platform?
A piece of malware that guesses keys, checks the validity, and if found to be valid, then shoots the result to a repository.
Years ago, I had a computer with constant 100% CPU utilization, except that the computer ran fine. A piece of malware was running, with a copy of the distributed.net client running in the background. If it hadn’t been for that, I’d have never known I had it.
Using the same principle today…
9,
Umm, you didnt KNOW??
MS has NEVER made a program to do ART/photo/scanning
They NEVEr made a DECENT hardware utility…
They made the OS, they made OFFICE, They TRY to make server software…The rest is BOUGHT, Stolen, or made by someone ELSE…
re: 5…..A while back I heard a rumor from a reliable source that even Intel’s graphics/marketing group used Macs. But think about it…left coast creative types are the core of Apple’s market. If you don’t use Macs out there, you probably can’t find good people for that sort of work. And let’s be honest at the same time…the exact same apps are available for both platforms, and the performance differences are zero.
As for Product keys…yet again it is proven that this is little more than a game of leapfrog. I bet most of us run 100% legal copies of XP on our important machines…but how many of us have the ability to load XP on any number of boxes, without any activation, and it will run forever?????
99% of people BOUGHT there PC from a store, that says HP/DELL/COMPAQ/E machines, on the side of the computer…
Every one of them has a legal copy.
THOSE few. 2-5% that KNOW BETTER, and want a GREAT machine for games….They had their machine MADE or built them… MOSt of those BOUGHT a legal copy.
those FEW that got a hack copy…Know it..
then comes those PEOPLE, that MAke the disks, and SELL copies to consumers, WHO THINK they bought a legal copy… THOSE are the ASSHOLES.
Pedro, I wasn’t kidding.
Hope this works…
Microsoft G5’s
Okaaaay… that’s weird. It’s there I tell ya. Let’s try and get there from here then…
Microsoft G5’s
Is anyone surprised at this?
What is funny is the sheer number of people fooled by this hoax. People who should know better.
Whatch the Vista Fud’o’sphere credibility burn, baby burn.
There have been a few hacks before this but they are complicated or do not actually bypass activation, just freeze the time. I have yet to call Redmond and beg for activation of a product, legit or otherwise. I coin it ‘pactivate’ (patch-activate)
I may have overheard someone saying once..Only stupid people pay for….
#6, We really try to come up with the best possible caption. 😉
21…if having ethics and respecting laws makes us stupid, then so be it. The world needs more similarly stupid people.
“how long do you think it will take before people catch on to the fact that you can call in and hijack already purchased keys once you generate one that someone else activated?”
You mean I might try to activate my new computer only to find that 62 illegal aliens have already used my key?
Pedro, you are only fooling yourself.
Mac tested Bootcamp on a Mac, and Microsoft uses Mac G5’s in their printing department for their Windoze promotional material.
Face the facts. Get over it.
Why do Mac people want to run MS operating systems anyway? There is this unbeleivable interest in running OSX along side both XP and Vista. So if your platform is so great, what is the deal?
30. Also noticed, most XP users arent even interested in upgrading. They like XP fine, its mainly the Mac customers.
Mark,
I there with ya man. Ive been using Vista on my personal computer since release. I think it is great and fun. But the thought of undertaking an upgrade migration in the office and stores gives me the chills. Who wants to work that hard? I’ll migrate the same way It happened with XP. As computers die, the new computers will have Vista on em.
Also, this report is a hoax. Other than the commenters on the first blog, no one is credibly reporting success with this hack. Can anyone on this blog confirm this? Ive been trying since last night, have yet to get a single hit.
Nothing here is yet reminicent of the mini-computer migration to windows that happened in the 90’s. Just lots of delusional fanboie spamming.
Mark, The reason for Bootcamp is mostly a marketing ploy to offer timid Windoze users an easy way to convert to Mac OS. As a mac user, I’ve had the ability to run Windoze on my Mac for years, and never used it, and never wanted to use it. So stop bellyaching and buy a Mac. They cost a little more but they also hold their value better. Net cost of ownership is actually the same or less than a crap do-it-youreslf cheapo PC, but without the pain in the neck. Microsoft obviously knows this already. I wonder if they’ve upgraded their 2 skids of G5’s to Quad Core Mac Pro’s.
LMAO!
#13 – Olo Baggins of Bywater
“And let’s be honest at the same time…the exact same apps are available for both platforms, and the performance differences are zero.”
…and if you left it at that it would seem that neither platform has any significant advantage. Unfortunately, there are massive differences in support costs and stability (which has a significant direct impact on availability and productivity), to name just two major factors in total cost of ownership. When TCOE and ROI are considered, BillG’s imitation OS X throws a rod before it even gets past the lights. Not much of a race.
#19 – GregA
“Whatch the Vista Fud’o’sphere credibility burn, baby burn.”
Ah, isn’t that a line from the Blue Man of Death Group’s hit single, Vista Inferno ?
#32 – JimR
Given time, you’ll familiarize yourself w/ the trolls and the Mac-enviers-in-denial. You’ll never convince them that water is wet, let alone anything computer-related…