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Windows Vista Keygen a Hoax

An anonymous reader writes "The author of the Windows Vista keygen that was reported yesterday has admitted that the program does not actually work. Here is the initial announcement of the original release of the keygen, and here is the followup post in which the same author acknowledges that the program is fake. Apparently, the keygen program does legitimately attack Windows Vista keys via brute force, but the chances of success are too low for this to be a practical method. Quote from the author: 'Everyone who said they got a key is probably lying or mistaken!'"

30 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. i thought so by jrwr00 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I figured it would turn out like that, its just a random number gen that prints a 25 digit number.
    a 4 year old using BASIC could do that

  2. People lie on the internet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Quote from the author: 'Everyone who said they got a key is probably lying or mistaken!'"

    Oh sure. Next I suppose you're going to tell me that the guy who claims he ordered (and received) a 37" LCD TV for $7.99 due to a price mistake is lying, too. Or the kid who swore he put a Beta tape in a VHS deck and it played...Don't you have any faith in people anymore?

    1. Re:People lie on the internet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      My favorite was always the "If you heat up a needle and put it through this particular spot on your Tomb Raider CD, Lara Croft will be naked!" How many did that one disappoint, I wonder?

      =)

    2. Re:People lie on the internet? by TheVelvetFlamebait · · Score: 3, Funny

      How many did that one disappoint, I wonder?
      I wasn't disappointed until I read that!
      --
      You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
    3. Re:People lie on the internet? by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 2, Funny

      My favorite was always the "If you heat up a needle and put it through this particular spot on your Tomb Raider CD, Lara Croft will be naked!" How many did that one disappoint, I wonder?

      But that one really worked. I did it myself. I swear!

      --
      This guy's the limit!
    4. Re:People lie on the internet? by secolactico · · Score: 2, Informative

      My favorite was always the "If you heat up a needle and put it through this particular spot on your Tomb Raider CD, Lara Croft will be naked!" How many did that one disappoint, I wonder?

      Uh? Never heard of that hoax. Is there any reference on the web? A cursory google search turns up nothing.

      --
      No sig
    5. Re:People lie on the internet? by shawn(at)fsu · · Score: 2, Funny

      I don't know about that, but I do know that if I post this message 10 times I will get a free thingamajiggy in the mail. It works, my friend said so.

      --
      500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
    6. Re:People lie on the internet? by antibryce · · Score: 2, Funny

      How many did that one disappoint, I wonder?

      I know of at least one... :(

  3. you posted to the wrong thread by DrSkwid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think you meant this one and you should have said "I think this is a hoax"

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  4. OEM_BIOS_Emulation_Toolkit by ekasperc · · Score: 5, Informative

    OEM_BIOS_Emulation_Toolkit_For_Microsoft_Windows_V ista_X86.v1.0-PARADOXThis has been floating around for a few minutes now, and according to the history of this group, i guess this is a bulletproof solution ..
    But i don't know what will be the impact for online upgrades since i don't use Vista myself.

    1. Re:OEM_BIOS_Emulation_Toolkit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      OEM activation works by having OEM identifiers and SLIC table stored in the BIOS and Microsoft then sign a cert per OEM (also required). The softmod uses vista boot manager to spoof flashed BIOS. Patching a VM should be even easier.

      Once again, product activation is only a PITA for legit customers.

    2. Re:OEM_BIOS_Emulation_Toolkit by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 4, Informative

      Hmmm, I wasn't aware of this. Then again, I haven't been paying much attention to Vista stuff anyways. A few minutes of digging around brought up this site, which looks to have links to modified BIOS files for quite a few motherboards. Pretty sneaky, sis...

      --
      This guy's the limit!
    3. Re:OEM_BIOS_Emulation_Toolkit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Links... PARADOX's OEM emulation tool is out on the various torrent sites. Here is the link from Demonoid.

      Pantheon released a full Windows Vista Ulimate CD with their own activation tool using the same principle. Here is the NZB set (click NZB to download the file) to facilitate downloading from Usenet. Posts are two hours old so they may need a bit longer if you're not using Giganews, Newshosting, etc.

    4. Re:OEM_BIOS_Emulation_Toolkit by Pharmboy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While I understand your logic, I disagree with your conclusion. To play some games, you must have Windows at this time. I would rather than people who must have a copy, find a way to get it free. This way they are not financially tied into MS, and they are not any more inclined to invest any money into MS.

      Also, since Vista comes with 90% of all computers sold in the US, the fact that they don't have it already means they are building their own boxes instead of buying Dells. Guys that build their own don't pirate OS's because it is cheaper, they do it because it is there to be done. Like running apache on an Xbox...it has no practical value, but fun to try anyway, and play a little with it.

      --
      Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
  5. Why by JackMeyhoff · · Score: 5, Interesting

    .. doesnt somebody actually create a distributed brute force on Windows activation. How many windows machinès in the world? That adds up to some pretty powerful attack.

    --
    http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
    1. Re:Why by vivaoporto · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because 1) It is not intelligent, brute force was never needed to bypass Windows Activation before 2) It is not subtle enough, and an operation this size would put a big bullseye on whoever did it 3) It is not profitable, people that run those botnets do it for profit, not to "stick it to the man", or to piss off Microsoft.

    2. Re:Why by JackMeyhoff · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes but you will be doing that every time, once you got the algorithm you just have to seed it (most likely a hash of your computer configuration) to generate valid keys. They cannot go and redo the algorithm without impacting a LARGE amount of their customers, they can black list numbers but so what, with the algorithm you just genereate a new valid one. GAME OVER. Isnt that what we want to render it TOTALLY useless FOR GOOD? This is the way, not some bypass thats just temporary. THINK BIGGER!

      --
      http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
  6. /.'d by oDDmON+oUT · · Score: 2, Funny

    Oh well, didn't really want to read a retraction anyway.

    --
    Some days it's just not worth
    chewing through my restraints.
  7. Good scare for Vista people though by suso · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Even thought it turned out to not be true, there are a lot of people who only read Slashdot and other news places during the week and won't see this retraction, so they may never know that it was fake. So they will go off with a further impression that its unsafe to run Vista and you could have your legitimate key compromised at any moment. Its like the tactics that some politicians and corporations use. What is someone going to post next week and retract on Saturday?

  8. When in reality by Alien54 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The 25 digit key is in base 36 (0-9 plus A-Z), providing 8.08281277e+38 possible keys, without accounting for various error checking and validation schemes

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
    1. Re:When in reality by jrockway · · Score: 2, Informative

      > If a 100 millionth of all possible keys will work, then you will have to produce, on average, 100 million keys before you hit one that works.

      Actually, it's 50 million on average.

      --
      My other car is first.
    2. Re:When in reality by solitas · · Score: 2, Informative
      The 25 digit key is in base 36 (0-9 plus A-Z), providing 8.08281277e+38 possible keys, without accounting for various error checking and validation schemes

      Actually, there should be a lot less than that since some characters are always letters and some characters are always numbers.

      --
      "It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
    3. Re:When in reality by kbradford · · Score: 2, Insightful

      0.001% of 8.08E+38 is still 8.08E+34. That is a VERY LARGE number. Why would MS create a key algorithm that allowed for so many valid keys? Not only would they never need that many, but it would only make it that much easier for brute force cracking.

      Obviously it isn't that big.

  9. Might not even have to validate keys at all anymor by gd23ka · · Score: 5, Informative

    I see no reason why they even have an algorithm to check whether
    a key is valid before submitting it to their server for signing.

    If I were them I would do what prepaid mobile phone has been doing
    for years: generate completely random keys and at the signing server
    end just check if that key is in the database and if it's not already
    used. If that's the case then all they would have to do is sign the
    key and the computer configuration and return that to the client code
    that would in turn check if the signature is valid.

    That way there would be no way to brute force keys because they have
    control over the validation server and can put a stop to that and there
    is no key validation code exposed from which someone might derive a
    key generator or at least get hints at how the keys are distributed
    in key space.

  10. Re:If it's actually a brute-force == Solution! by julesh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Based on calculations in the other thread discussing this, we reckoned that if MS hadn't been stupid designing the key system, you'd have to try somewhere in the region of (IIRC) 10^17 keys before getting one that works. Now we can discard the "evidence" that suggested they had been stupid, this is back to being our baseline assumption. Based on speed-of-trial stats reported there, this would take a 65K-node botnet around 14 years to crack a single key.

  11. Re:Key gen or not.. by johnlcallaway · · Score: 3, Funny

    You, kind sir, may be expecting SP1 to actually fix the first round of bugs.

    I, on the other hand, do not.

    (Or I fucked up the post ... both are equally valid options)

    --
    I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
  12. Huh? by encoderer · · Score: 2, Funny

    The atomic number of zinc is 30?

  13. Not Quite.... by encoderer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I can [not!] speak for myself when I say that even if you don't buy the OS, you can still be very easily financially tied to MS. Both in terms of hardware purchases and software purchases that are windows-only.

    I probably have $1k in windows software.

    Of course, I don't understand the rabid microsoft-hating to begin with. Their product works fine for me. I can't tell you the last time I had a system crash (opposed to an application crash), or the last time I was infected with spyware or a virus. Also, my computer runs at a perfectly acceptable clip, there's an entire ecosystem of software and peripherals, not to mention support and documentation. I know that if I have a problem w/ windows, office, etc, SOMEBODY has had that problem before and Google can probably explain it to me.

    I'll probably be labeled as a Troll because only on slashdot can you be a troll for writing a positive review of a perfectly acceptable software package. Cheers!

  14. A Winner Is You! by vain+gloria · · Score: 2, Funny

    The brute force approach is fundamentally impossible, unless you are the luckiest person in the world.
    Define "lucky". You've beaten amazing odds in a manner unrepeatable even given a million lifetimes and what do you get for it? A copy of Windows Vista.

    Probably not even one of the Turbo Hyper Fighting versions either.
  15. Done smart is NOT DONE AT ALL by Vryl · · Score: 2, Informative

    Work out the size of the keyspace.

    When you have done that work out how long it would take if you used every computer in the world.

    Express it in terms of billions of years, and compare it to the lifetime of the sun.

    Then get the cluestick and hit yourself repeatedly on the head.