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Asus Ships Cracking Software On Recovery DVD
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."
Someone is getting fired, and Asus is going to be getting sued.
Asus, however accidentally / carelessly, have just made themselves the obvious target of a lawsuit for distribution of tools for copyright infringement...
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Who needs a serial cracker for WinRAR when it just keeps working after the trial period anyway?
How the cracking software got onto the restore DVD as well as why it was even present at Asus in the first place.
I can't imagine why a company like Asus would even "need" to crack software keys when they can, most likely, get it at a discount. I mean, it's not like Asus is a barely-scraping-by company that is unable to afford even simple tools.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
I would think that this would be of much more interest than some cracking tool one can download. Even the Asus source code should be of more interest as it could be used to improve FLOSS support.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
If you can't keep it off your distribution CDs, you just have WAAAAAAY too much of it around.
EPIC FAIL
How do you mix these sorts of data up like this, and how that it even approaches production? Granted there may not be much of a content review process before driver disks get made, but come on! A powerpoint of major flaws included on a DRIVER DISK?!
Bet there'll be a review process now! HAH!
Because if it's on a recovery CD which is duplicated a thousand times then it's worthless to the company you want to blackmail as they're screwed anyway so why pay for your extortion.
Several years ago I worked in a very large and respectable company that shall remain unnamed (but whose name rhymes with, say, "Nokia"...) and we just shipped our turnkey system with our software AND with the source code. And the company wasn't (and still isn't, AFAIK, but don't work for them since a long time) an open-source company :o) It was a screwup by the consultant guys in India.
I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often, knowing the level of QC that happens in India and China.
oh, right, I forgot that it does indeed happen. Even nowadays (de javu).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
If you read TFA, you will find that this is more than a case of a hard disk someone forgot to erase before selling an old computer.
This time, the wayward data are on a recovery DVD that comes with new ASUS computers, and presumably hundreds or thousands have been shipped. Which makes the following two differences:
1) Trying to keep this secret is probably futile, there are too many copies floating around.
2) Distributing stuff by accident in this way is an epic, newsworthy blunder. Much worse than forgetting to erase a single harddisk.
C - the footgun of programming languages