Windows Vista Activation System Cracked
After a year of braying about Vista’s enhanced security, Microsoft has a target on its back. And hackers have been quick to aim and shoot.
A newly released hack lets software pirates register unlicensed business copies of Vista for six months at a time. The new hack — named for Bill Gates’ wife, Melinda — takes advantage of a weakness in Microsoft’s Key Management Service.
How It Works
Here’s how it works: Vista owners, including business users whose companies bought their software for them, have to prove their copy of Vista is legal by activating it with Microsoft’s servers over the Internet.
But companies that buy more than 25 copies of Vista’s business editions can use a shortcut, the Key Management Service, to activate their computers with a server that’s inside their office and run by their I.T. department.
The new hack lets a software pirate download a fake copy of the Key Management Service in a VMware image — that is, virtualization software that lets a computer mimic a standalone server. The hacker then directs the unlicensed copy of Vista to activate itself through the fake server in the VMware software.
Pirates who want free copies of Vista can find the Melinda Gates hack with little trouble; even well-known news outlets have posted its location on their Web sites. But there’s a catch: Microsoft limits activations with the Key Management Service to 180 days, meaning an unlicensed copy of Vista, hacked or not, won’t run forever.
Six-Month Fix
Six months is more than enough time to wake the Redmond giant. Microsoft is likely to patch its system quickly because piracy has taken a bite from its bottom line.
According to the Business Software Alliance, an antipiracy group that counts Microsoft among its sponsors, a whopping 21 percent of all software in the U.S. is unlicensed,…
