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Microsoft Genuine Advantage Cracked

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the absolutely-secure dept.

piyush ranjan writes "An Indian researcher has cracked the much-touted "impenetrable" Windows Genuine Advantage of Microsoft. According to Microsoft this service would soon require all Windows users to verify their license before downloading updates."

3 of 427 comments (clear)

  1. Text by krray · · Score: 5, Informative

    Indian cracks Microsoft's anti-piracy program

    Alok Sharma | June 21, 2005 14:53 IST

    An Indian researcher has breached the much-touted "impenetrable" Windows Genuine Advantage of Microsoft.

    Bangalore-based Debasis Mohanty has cracked WGA through an "easy-to-exploit" weakness in the software for generating illegal copies of the Windows XP programme.

    Microsoft confirmed the claims of Mohanty, but sought to downplay it saying, "It represents very little threat." A company spokesperson said they did expect counterfeiters to try a number of different methods to circumvent safeguards provided by WGA.

    WGA is an anti-piracy programme that keeps a tab on consumers whether they are running legitimately licensed copies of Windows XP.

    Mohanty has posted a detailed proof-of-concept programme on the high-profile security mailing list of the software giant, showing how the WGA validation check can be tricked to generate key codes for use on illegal copies of the software.

    Using a secondary Microsoft validation tool called 'genuinecheck.Exe', Mohanty claims to have made it possible for people to trick the safeguard mechanism and download and run the supposedly restricted software from Microsoft's download centre, he said.

  2. Funny that you asked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.hackingspirits.com/vuln-rnd/defeating-w ga-check.zip

  3. Windows Genuine Advantage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The entire purpose of Windows Genuine Advantage of Microsoft is to allow people to know they have actually recieved a Genuine product and not some product that has a key generated for it. If a person gets the product and installs it and then it fails the Windows Genuine Advantage they know they have paid for a pirated version and can then report that to the authorities. Your average home user is not going to install the OS and then run the crack, they want to know that they have a Genuine version (i.e. a genuine licence) that they have paid for. I know if I purchased another OS for the full price i.e. Mac OSX, I would be pissed if it was just a pirated version.