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Asus Ships Cracking Software On Recovery DVD

Posted by timothy on from the cold-sweat-in-taiwan dept.

Barence writes "Asus is accidentally shipping software crackers and confidential documents on the recovery DVDs that come with its laptops. The startling discovery was made by a PC Pro reader whose antivirus software was triggered by a key cracker for the WinRAR compression software, which was located on the recovery DVD for his Asus laptop. Along with the key cracker the disc also contained confidential Asus documents including a PowerPoint presentation that details 'major problems' identified by the company, including application compatibility issues. The UK reader is not alone, either — several users in the US and Australia have also found suspicious files on Asus discs."

13 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. Cracking WinRAR is lame by Spatial · · Score: 3, Informative

    WinRAR is free to use, last time I checked it only asked you to buy it through a brief, unintrusive nag window. Cracking it is really damn lame.

    1. Re:Cracking WinRAR is lame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think the tool is actually for extracting the passwords for any protected archives created with the WinRAR application...

    2. Re:Cracking WinRAR is lame by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 3, Informative

      IZarc is also free (beer not speech). I use it on all the systems I have. I love it.

    3. Re:Cracking WinRAR is lame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      actually it now has a 40 day enforced trial period. If you go beyond the 40 days the nag window is as far as you get. (unless you uninstall it, download a newer release and install again.)

  2. Re:Someone Is Getting Fired by Four_One_Nine · · Score: 2, Informative
    It's truly amazing how difficult it is to fire people in many organizations, so I doubt it is a guarantee that anyone will be fired.

    However this is exactly the kind of public exposure of software piracy that the offended companies can use to boost earnings.

    Firings=No Lawsuits=Yes

    --
    I did it for Johnny.
  3. Re:WinRAR by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Informative

    Which, for the benefit of those who have never used 7-Zip, fully supports unpacking RAR archives out of the box without having to have unrar or WinRAR at all.

    Now if you want to make RAR files, then you'll need rar or WinRAR. But also you should note that 7-Zip's native 7z format gets rather better compression than RAR. ;)

    --
    My blog
  4. Re:Someone Is Getting Fired by Skrynesaver · · Score: 5, Informative
    It was in the wav files used in the XP tour introduction thinghy

    LISTB INFOICRD 2000-04-06 IENG Deepz0ne ISFT Sound Forge 4.5

    Was present in the files, a sign that a pirated version of Sound Forge from Deepz0ne of the Radium warez crew.

    --
    "Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
  5. Re:WinRAR by Benanov · · Score: 3, Informative

    7zip has a good UI *if* you mainly use the shell integration features (enabled by default.)

    7zip is also FSF-Free minus unrar.dll, whereas WinRAR has very restrictive licensing terms.

  6. Re:WinRAR by Mr_Silver · · Score: 2, Informative

    Who needs WinRAR when you have 7-Zip?

    And for those of us who want an alternative to 7-zip with a user-interface that doesn't make you want to gouge your eyes out with spoons, then there is IZArc.

    (free in beer, not speech - but I don't really care)

    --
    Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
  7. Re:Someone Is Getting Fired by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Texas is definitely an "at will" state still. An employer can fire an employee for any reason (unemployment hinges if the firing is done for "gross misconduct" rather than termination), and an employee can leave for any reason.

  8. Re:All of this could have been avoided by Machtyn · · Score: 2, Informative

    7zip supports rar, arj, zip, 7z, cab, iso, etc. etc., and it is a free program, unlike winRAR or WinZip. And it works very nicely.

  9. Because they're BSA members, of course. by Xenographic · · Score: 4, Informative

    I know you're joking, but for anyone who doesn't get the joke, Microsoft is a BSA member.

    They only terrorize small businesses.

  10. Re:All of this could have been avoided by Cytotoxic · · Score: 2, Informative

    7zip supports rar, arj, zip, 7z, cab, iso, etc. etc., and it is a free program, unlike winRAR or WinZip. And it works very nicely.

    This is only partially true. 7zip supports 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR fully. The other formats are "unzip" only. So no-go if you need to compress with RAR (the original thread). Too bad because RAR is amazing on database backups. I often get 90% + compression on multigig SQL server backups - much higher than zip or built in compression in backup utilities.