Foresight?

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy
James Madison (American 4th US President (1809-17), and one of the founding fathers of his country. 1751-1836)

Saturday, March 3, 2007

It is like a soap opera with all these damn Vista hacks!

There are ups and there are downs...there is truth, then there are lies...you get excited, then you get let down...if those descriptions don't bring to mind a soap opera then I don't know what will.

If you read my previous post "Keznews gets ya keys via Brute Force..." and all the hype that the Keznews story,"Vista Brute Force Keygen", that caused all the hype across the web. Then you also know that the person that made the "keygen" had a change of heart on the legitimacy of his program...doing a total about face on the fact that his program doesn't work...when prior to the world tapping in he was animate about it working. Although most assume that while his "keygen" MIGHT return some keys eventually in a few days, weeks, or years...it is more probable that it was in fact a hoax and that those that reported that they generated keys were probably lying in a bid to be l337...ORRRRRR...it actually does work, as the link was taken down to the proggy, and the developer, Computer User, got a little scared at all the hype and the overall fear that his ass was toast when MS or the other authorities found him.

Well there is the down...now for the up AGAIN...along comes PARADOX, the cracking group, with their own little work around to to get a legit version of Vista. The story was brought to my attention via THE LAND OF RICHARD in the article "Vista cracked by Paradox 2007" and boy it is a whopper that might have an effect on those vendors that distribute Vista via special OEM licensing. The crack relies on the BIOS Emulation Toolkit For Windows Vista x86 and here is a quote on how it works:
Microsoft allows large hardware manufacturers (e.g. ASUS, HP, Dell) to ship their products
containing a Windows Vista installation that does NOT require any kind of product activation as
this might be considered an unnecessary inconvenience for the end-user.
Instead these so-called 'Royalty OEMs' are granted the right to embed certain license information
into their hardware products, which can be validated by Windows Vista to make obtaining further
activation information (online or by phone) obsolete.
This mechanism is commonly referred to as 'SLP 2.0' ('system-locked pre-installation 2.0') and
consists of the following three key elements:

1. The OEM's hardware-embedded BIOS ACPI_SLIC information signed by Microsoft.

2. A certificate issued by Microsoft that corresponds to the specific ACPI_SLIC information.

The certificate is an XML file found on the OEM's installation/recovery media,
ususally called something like 'oemname.xrm-ms'.

3. A special type of product key that corresponds to the installed edition of Windows Vista.

This key can usually be obtained from some installation script found on the OEM's
installation/recovery media or directly from a pre-installed OEM system.

If all three elements match Windows Vista's licensing mechansim considers the given
installation a valid system-locked pre-activated copy (that does not require any
additional product activation procedures).

So the basic concept of the tool at hand is to present any given BIOS ACPI_SLIC information to Windows
Vista's licensing mechanism by means of a device driver.
In combination with a matching product key and OEM certificate this allows for rendering any system
practically indistinguishable from a legit pre-activated system shipped by the respective OEM.



In any event...several link to follow...READ UP...as this saga is bound to have a few more twists and turns.

Vista cracked totally by Paradox - Microsoft's in trouble now @ Digg
Vista cracked by Paradox 2007 @ THE LAND OF RICHARD
Windows Vista: Finally Cracked! @ delirial
Vista Licensing Cracked @ In Security
Updated Paradox Vista Activate All Versions & Dual Boot @ Download Database
It's official: Pirates crack Vista at last @ APC

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think Computer User got scared and pulled a 180 to save his butt from being sued and/or jailed. I tried his keygen and left it up for a day or so and it didnt return anything. I read that in theory the keygen should eventually work but it would take a long time (months?).

As for Paradox's crack, it works perfectly. Could this mean Microsoft just got owned for the last time? Imagine the loss of sales.

ctrl said...

They did get owned in a big way and from what I understand there are supposed to be a wider variety of BIOS cracks made available (ABIT, MSI, etc) to work out some quirks with those machines that aren't represented by what is currently available with the Paradox crack.

If you haven't read this article:
Microsoft executive: Pirating software? Choose Microsoft!

It talks about how Microsoft doesn't condone piracy of it's products, but rather than pirate their competitor they would prefer you to pirate their software. They assume that at some point a pirate will actually go legit and buy licensed copy of MS software in the future. Good read...check it out!

Anonymous said...

Actually I did read it, and Im not surprised. It does make sense, sort of a demo of it because eventually it gets annoying have to crack programs causing your system to be unstable. Thats why I ended up going open source/freeware and using a legit copy of XP Pro. With so many countries and organizations taking a route other than Microsoft, I think its the beginning of a big change.

ctrl said...

Yeah...I to am a huge freeware/open source user as well. It is pretty amazing what linux has become over the years and I have no doubts that in the future it will be the competitor to windows that the Open Source community are hoping for.

On a side note...I would have loved to have been in the room when the Greek leader told Bill Gates that software piracy of MS Products help keep Greece on the technology map.