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Vista Activation Cracked by Brute Force

Posted by Zonk on from the disturbance-in-the-force dept.

Bengt writes "The Inquirer has a story about a brute force Vista key activation crack. It's nothing fancy; it's described as a 'glorified guesser.' The danger of this approach is that sooner or later the key cracker will begin activating legitimate keys purchased by other consumers. From the article: 'The code is floating, the method is known, and there is nothing MS can do at this point other than suck it down and prepare for the problems this causes. To make matters worse, Microsoft will have to decide if it is worth it to allow people to take back legit keys that have been hijacked, or tell customers to go away, we have your money already, read your license agreement and get bent, we owe you nothing.'"

4 of 470 comments (clear)

  1. Re:MS would owe at least the key by tomknight · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I guess you don't work for a commercial software company then. It's theft. Theft is wrong. Fuck the thieves.

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    Oh arse
  2. Re:MS would owe at least the key by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Copyright infringement is not theft. It is immoral of you to deliberately misrepresent the issue by using loaded terminology.

    If you take something that doesn't belong to you (i.e., Vista), it is theft. The fact that the manufacturing cost is zero doesn't mean it's not theft. There is a price for the goods. You didn't pay the price for the goods, yet you have the goods. Therefore, you broke the buyer-seller agreement. Therefore, you stole it.

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    Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
  3. I have to ask by Bullfish · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    If vista is such a piece of crap, why bother trying to pirate it? Also, if the claimed numbers of pirated copies of windows out there are anywhere close to the truth, could the problems those people have be the result of not being able to patch and update their software? Are some people really blaming MS in many cases because their software won't work right when pirated? I ask this because a) some keep saying it is crap, b) I have owned a variety of machines over the years and I never really had the kinds of problems people are complain about (nor have my friends and family) and c) every OS I've used has short comings and annoyances.

  4. Re:MS would owe at least the key by DeadChobi · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Because it is a distinction which allows you to rest easy at night knowing that when you steal someone else's license keys, it's not your actions that caused their problems.

    Yeah, it's really Microsoft's fault that the pirates' resort to brute forcing keys. Not the pirates' responsibility at all because it wouldn't be a problem if there wasn't any protection whatsoever.

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    SRSLY.