Microsoft Vista Cracked

Mike Howes 16 Nov, 2006 at 12:24pm ET Article published in Tech

Despite their best efforts and anti-piracy measures, cracked copies of its Vista operating system are apparently already doing the rounds on torrent sites.

A version called “Vista BillGates” comes with a product key and an “activation crack” that bypasses Microsoft’s activation process.

Apparently Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise Edition has also been cracked. So far Microsoft has refused to comment about hacks, but claims it is working hard to stop pirates…….the weapon it will use is software that deactivates pirated copies of Windows Vista by sending a patch through Windows Update that can invalidate certain product keys.

Source: The Inquirer

Comments

16 Nov 2006 ~ 12:38pm mmonnin Surprise surprise...MS will fix it and someone will break that too. All they can do is try to stop every joe shmo from pirating. They will never stop everyone.
16 Nov 2006 ~ 1:24pm profdlp They ought to play the Loony Tunes theme music in the background...
16 Nov 2006 ~ 4:09pm jhenry 20 megs and it's still broken... haha
16 Nov 2006 ~ 11:47pm bothered Maybe if the price was more reasonable people would be more likely to buy it?
17 Nov 2006 ~ 4:18am RWB

bothered wrote:

Maybe if the price was more reasonable people would be more likely to buy it?

Exactly, I don't know about you but Halo 2 is not worth the $300, and to be frank it's not worth $100 for an upgrade... I like XP with the Vista Transformation Pack just fine.
17 Nov 2006 ~ 10:38am Trogan My next computer will be an OEM with Vista pre-installed
17 Nov 2006 ~ 12:09pm shwaip

bothered wrote:

Maybe if the price was more reasonable people would be more likely to buy it?

How much is reasonable for something that your computer won't run without?
17 Nov 2006 ~ 12:23pm profdlp

shwaip wrote:

How much is reasonable for something that your computer won't run without?

My computers are all running just fine without Vista already.
17 Nov 2006 ~ 12:37pm shwaip Right, so then don't buy it...but if you (the general you, not you you) are willing to upgrade to that hugely expensive power supply so your computer doesn't explode, or those two video cards to get all those fps, the price doesn't seem that unreasonable to me.

If you want cheap, you can always run Linux
17 Nov 2006 ~ 5:47pm DanG I'm pricing out a new system, and to buy a new copy of xp home oem with the vista upgrade coupon, it's $112 Cdn. How much cheaper can it get?
17 Nov 2006 ~ 7:32pm TheSmJ Will that cuepon be for Home Basic or Home Premium? Home Basic is pretty crummy, and many articles reviewing the editions state "Don't get Home Basic".

You can get Home Premium for free if you buy XP Media Center Edition (costs $100). That's a $50 savings for the new OS as it's going to cost $150.

As for this crack, supposedly it will stop working after the end of June at the lastest (If Microsoft doesn't find a way to kill it before then), as it uses RC2's keys and activation app, which is itself a timebomb.
18 Nov 2006 ~ 2:46am bothered

shwaip wrote:

How much is reasonable for something that your computer won't run without?

Well it won't run without a 13A plug, <£1, but I see your point.
I play games and they all cost around £30 and I'm sure none of them sell as many copies as windows. And as usual everything in the UK cost far more than it does in the states. A copy of XP pro from Amazon costs £235. This for a disc every PC supposedly 'needs' seems rather a lot. I have no problem with MS but I think if their OS cost, say, the price of a couple of games (£60/70?) I think far more people would buy it.
18 Nov 2006 ~ 6:20am Winga 235GBP for XP pro is hellishing expensive!!
Hardware and software in South Africa is also much more expensive than in the US and if it wasn't for the hassles I pick up from Customs and Excise every time I bring anything into the country, I would probably buy all my stuff overseas.

However 235 pounds is just daylight robbery. At our current Rand - Pound exchange rate that comes to R3200.00 I can pick up a retail copy of XP Pro locally for under R1300.00 Thats under 100 pounds. Home goes for R800.00
No wonder MS gets hacked the minute anything gets released
18 Nov 2006 ~ 12:56pm shwaip That is pretty ridiculous. I'd bet that there's either some online/local store where you can get it for about 100 pounds. XP pro is $250 at any retail store, but if you look online, it's not hard to find the upgrade for $100.

Still, remember that you're paying for about 5 years of support on the operating system. MS will be patching security holes (and there can be a lot), coming out with service packs, etc, and you don't have to pay. In the price of the OS, you're paying for the time that all the people spent researching/creating the OS, and maintaining it.

Most games see little/no support after a year or two.
19 Nov 2006 ~ 4:54am Enverex I just had a look around myself. Cheapest Kelkoo would find for XP Pro Retail was 230GBP, heh. Yay for expensive. People keep mentioning the "Upgrade" but that's assuming the person has something to upgrade.
19 Nov 2006 ~ 6:42am RWB

shwaip wrote:

Most games see little/no support after a year or two.

And I generally stop playing them after a week or two.
29 Nov 2006 ~ 5:50am OGROK WRONG WRONG WRONG ><. Actually, Vista has NOT been cracked. The crack that you are talking about does not work, it only activates a 30 day trial (LOL). In fact, from the looks of things it is very possible that Vista is NEVER going to be cracked, so you better start saving up for the $400 OS. Why is it that these news sites jump on wrong information. Everywhere I am seeing the same goddamn incorrect/completely false story about Vista being cracked, it makes my blood boil...
29 Nov 2006 ~ 7:14am Thrax It does more than activate a 30 day trial (It activates it until 2007); it's proof of concept that Microsoft's activation servers can still be foiled, and illustrates the sort of exploits we can expect in the future. It's not a crack in the sense that activation was completely disabled, but a "Proof of concept" virus, for example, is still a virus.
30 Nov 2006 ~ 2:22am OGROK Proof of concept? It didn't foil Microsoft's activation servers, Microsoft could shut them down whenever they want, but instead created a timebomb to allow them to use "demo" the OS until the actual release date. If you actually decided to look around the "cracking" sites, you would see that most groups have basically decided that cracking the OS is impossible and have given up. My prediction is that you won't be seeing any sort of REAL Vista crack in the near future, if ever. The OS is so dependent on the internet for validation/continued usage that standard cracking techniques are more or less useless.
30 Nov 2006 ~ 12:31pm lightnin what if you're like me and dont have internet access at home? no vista? that's really fine by me, i don't plan on ever owning another ms product. but seriously, is it THAT dependant on the internet?
30 Nov 2006 ~ 1:13pm Thrax Yes.
15 Dec 2006 ~ 11:28pm nonstop301

OGROK wrote:

The OS is so dependent on the internet for validation/continued usage that standard cracking techniques are more or less useless.

I agree with Ogrok there. Vista will not be cracked properly any time soon but cracking techniques are also modified according to what you are faced with. A complete crack will undoubtedly appear but there will be plenty of monkey ones out there too that only promise but don't deliver.
16 Dec 2006 ~ 6:05am Enverex It's in Microsoft's best interests to have their operating system pirated and I'm betting they know that. Why? Simple, a PC with Windows on is a PC that increases their market share and keeps them locked in as "Number one" regardless whether it was purchased legally or not. So although they don't make any money from a pirated copy, they do continue making money for any companies that licence them for any reason as well as it still helping keep them in the top spot. If piracy suddenly dissapeared I'm pretty sure you'd find a LOT (and I mean a lot) of people using older versions of Windows or switching to Linux. So either way, people end up using Windows.
16 Dec 2006 ~ 3:47pm Leonardo Enverex, I think there's a lot of truth in what you posted. Ideally, Microsoft would like to maintain 90% market penetration with every Windows installation being paid for, but it wouldn't surprise me that they'd rather have millions of pirated versions on computers than Linux.
22 Dec 2006 ~ 11:59am Sledgehammer70

Winga wrote:

Despite their best efforts and anti-piracy measures, cracked copies of its Vista operating system are apparently already doing the rounds on torrent sites.

A version called "Vista BillGates" comes with a product key and an "activation crack" that bypasses Microsoft's activation process.

Source: The Inquirer

Um... not good but Woot! also
10 Jan 2007 ~ 10:08pm NYCDrew What Microsoft refuses to understand, is that if someone(s) can program, someone(s) else can re-program(crack) it.