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Microsoft Talks Daily With Your Computer
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft Corp. acknowledged Wednesday that it needs to better inform users that its tool for determining whether a computer is running a pirated copy of Windows also quietly checks in daily with the software maker.
The company said the undisclosed daily check is a safety measure designed to allow the tool, called Windows Genuine Advantage, to quickly shut down in case of a malfunction."
The EULA is suppose to disclose this daily call-in feature. Lauren Weinstein, who is co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, was one of the first people to notice the daily communications to Microsoft. Report from Yahoo.com"
I haven't had it happen, but maybe this is what you're looking for?
Just the other night my copy of ZoneAlarm was alerting me that this exe was trying to make a shout-out to the Internet. A little searching told me what this was, so I set it to permanently deny the request. Problem solved!
Just be aware that there's a piece of malware going around that performs this function also. It looks like a microsoft box, comes up before you sign in and claims that your copy of windows is not genuine.
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
I heard horror stories of people with 'acquired' versions of Windows XP who went to the 'new' 'Windows Update' service and ended up with an annoying tray icon constantly reminding them that their version of XP is pirated.
But you know, I havent been to WindowsUpdate in over a year.
I use a great (and free) tool provided by microsoft themselves - called "MBSA" (Microsoft Base Security Analyzer) to download and install updates.
With MBSA, I can do a quick install of Windows XP with SP2 integrated in vmware, then run this tool, and find out that (as of yesterday) there are 39 hotfixes needed for vanilla XPSP2 install, and it gives me direct (no WGA crap) links to download these updates. All I have to do then is save them all one by one, integrate them into a XP SP2 iso image, and use this pre-integrated disk to install with.
Since i reinstall windows every few months this is not a problem, and for those who insist on keeping windows machine installed longer, they can simply use MBSA to download incremental updates and install them manually.
That's why Ghost is such an important tool! 1/Create Ghost image of your OS 2/Go to MS let them install what they want 3/Check for updates & write down KB# but don't install anything 4/Download the KB's you need to your HD 5/Restore the image you made & install the updates you downloaded. Now you have your updates without any MS garbage on your PC. In case you didn't notice media player has been calling home for years & that doesn't seem to bother anyone!
Or better yet, you can just prevent those packets from ever reaching their destination.
... You could also, of course, use a firewall, but where's the fun in that? ;-)
The DOS command route -p add 207.46.0.0 mask 255.255.0.0 [192.168.0.254] (replace the address in brackets with a random address on your current subnet) will permanently route all would-be "phone home" packets to the random address that you specified.
Just because it can't be explained doesn't mean it isn't true. Science fits into reality... not the other way around.
My Sygate got the beast on the fly and there wasn't any registry key that started it... So I couldn't block it from starting at each boot. So I simply renamed the file and I have not any trouble since that :D
:"WgaTray.bak" and it left my alone :D
The file is in the system32 directory and the filename is : "WgaTray.exe". I simply renamed it
Hope this help. Chow
Its been known for years since NT4 about the Windows Update manager.
I have seen it with the NT Server Network manager (I think that was it?) that sniffed out the packets. I remember reading how to enable your firewall to block it. ITs been awhile since I read about it but its old news.
http://saveie6.com/
I can disable it at will.
Me too. there are three services that windows requires to get the free updates. They demand one of them is set to launch "automatic".
I reenable the services, and get the updates - I then disable the services and guess what?
No phoning home.
Automatic Updates (allows the site to find, download and install high-priority updates for your computer)
Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) (helps updates download more quickly and without problems if the download process is interrupted)
Event Log (keeps a record of updating activities to help with troubleshooting, if needed)
make them manual -
Automatic Updates is the one that phones home.
It's trivially easy to shut off.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
The goal of many viruses is not to destroy stuff, but simple other goals such as:
- Make money over advertisement (adware).
- Botnets, in order to attain other goals (DoS, attacks, etc)
- Get passwords, credit cards number and other information which could be useful.
- Leave a message (think MSBLAST.exe kind). What better way to tell "I <3 you" than with the gift of a virus?
A destroyed installation of Windows does not serve much...Of Code And Men
The skanky copies of XP have a prog that fires randomly generated license codes at the server until it finds one that works. That means that when a skanky copy works a genuine copy ceases to work. It is simply a matter of who gets there first. With all these skanky copies using up so many genuine license codes it is not surprising that so many people are getting pissed off. Despite what the post further down says I have tried this out and found the prog worked well and did not cause any noticable delay. That is not to say that I advocate the use of such progs and in fact I personally would not use XP on a machine that is actually connected to the internet and only use Linux for the net except to try certain things out.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
"Notify me but don't automatically download or install them". (In Control Panel -> System -> Automatic Updates.)
Then you can pick and choose which updates you want, and when you decline one, it pops up a message in which you can check "Never ask me again".
Too late for those who trusted Microsoft, though...now you have to do a lot of registry tweaks and stuff.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Incorrect. The Seventh Circuit found that a shrink wrap license (EULA) is an enforceable software license.
Developers: We can use your help.