Posted on 03/02/2007 7:31:22 AM PST by sionnsar
Bengt writes "The Inquirer has a story about a brute force Vista key activation crack. It's nothing fancy; it's described as a 'glorified guesser'. The danger of this approach is that sooner or later the key cracker will begin activating legitimate keys purchased by other consumers. From the article: 'The code is floating, the method is known, and there is nothing MS can do at this point other than suck it down and prepare for the problems this causes. To make matters worse, Microsoft will have to decide if it is worth it to allow people to take back legit keys that have been hijacked, or tell customers to go away, we have your money already, read your license agreement and get bent, we owe you nothing.'"
haha, security, windows, business
What version XP do you have?
The only way to know what these fools *pirates* are up to is to actually get into the gutter with them. AARGG
sometimes you can actually learn a thing or 2 from them, pretty surprising.
I have to go to a friends house Sunday to get his network back up after a HD failure. It will most likely be the same there. My daughters laptop with MCE was a mess a couple of months ago and my wife's machine is dead as we speak. I also have my daughters friends laptop on the kitchen table to get to when I can.
I can't say I've seen it all, but I've seen enough. It's just my way of spouting off about stupid crap that just adds to the work I have to do, but I don't think it stops a single pirate from doing anything. As far as I know, there isn't one program out there that's worth having that isn't cracked or hacked in some way. Activation is usually easy, but it still just gets on your nerves after awhile.I have had a couple of times though when every time you boot up it says to activate. Not much else to do but re install. I've spent the time searching MS for work arounds, but most of the time it's just easier to format C: than guessing any one of 15 possibilities. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get my scanner to show up and get the motherboard temp to show up and to get my volume control to show up in the taskbar. If I put it there, I reboot and it's gone. The USB scanner works, but doesn't show up in some of my programs. The motherboard temp monitor has been installed and uninstalled 5 times with no joy. Each time I boot, it acts like it's still installing.
I'm sure all this is from trying to move a ghost image from the IDE to SCSI but I just hate re installing 30 programs from scratch. That probably equals 28 restarts with about 10 more after they update on dsl.
Most people use a Dell or HP so they don't have to activate or register other than the first time, which is no big deal. The pain is when upgrading or OEM. Every Windows XP upgrade I have done required me to call the Indians to get it activated. The Internet activation would never work. On top of that the Windows Genuine Software thingy is automatic in the Windows Update, so again most would never notice it. Then again I come across to many PCs that have the lock icon down at the bottom and find out that the user has never updated Windows.
While this appears to be a mistake by Microsoft, the company intentionally made EULA-violating upgrades very easy for XP too. You can install an XP upgrade to a blank hard drive, after briefly inserting a Windows 98 CD to "prove" that you are upgrading. It is not necessary to provide a Win98 CD key, all you need is a real or copied Win98 CD.
"That's completely incorrect. Legitimate users of Windows have to deal with activation for a minute or two and in the vast majority of cases they never see it again.
There seem to be a lot of reports to the contrary. Apparently, over a million legitimate Windows users have been wrongly informed that their copy of Windows is not "genuine". And now the hackers are stealing activation keys from the legitimate users, which will result in more hassle and irritation for Microsoft customers.
Fortunately, there are other popular operating systems that don't require activation keys at all."
Back when I was still playing Half Life or Team Fortress/Day of Defeat. There was always an issue of people stealing your Half Life Keys. Valve looked at it as oh well buy another copy. Our Admins were good at recognizing who had legitimate key(usually a regular player) and somebody that just happen to show up and have a key of a regular player.
I decompiled the computeruser bruteforce keygen yesterday, Vista can be "cracked" MUCH easier than what he was trying to do, "HINT" you Don't need a key at all to install Vista.(It's not really a crack so much as using the software as an unlimited demo)
also lookout for the office keygen that he has inside there i don't like the way that it's packed.
possible virus.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.