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Windows Phone 7 Marketplace Hack Demonstrated
broggyr writes "Seems it didn't take long to hack the Windows Phone 7 marketplace. Quoting WPCentral: 'For developers, the weakness in Microsoft's DRM for Windows Phone 7 applications has been well known for quite some time, and there have been calls for Microsoft to address these concerns ... Since then, a "white hat" developer has provided WPCentral with a proof-of-concept program that can successfully pull any application from the Marketplace, remove the security and deploy to an unlocked Windows Phone with literally a push of a button. Alternatively, you could just save the cracked XAP file to your hard drive. Neither the app nor the methodology is public, and it will NOT be released ... It is important to note that this was all done within six hours by one developer.'"
Neither the app nor the methodology is public, and it will NOT be released
Until / unless sufficient cash has been offered to the developer...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
it is first
unlike the fact that some DRM has been broken.....
Neither the app nor the methodology is public, and it will NOT be released
Kind of selfish, why should the only other owner of a Windows Phone 7 have to pay for their apps?
Summation 2
* Microsoft Kin
* iPhone antenna
* Windows Phone 7
Anything else we should add to the list?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
n/t
Or calls? We used to call this phreaking but I guess it's gone out of style.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
What's the over/under on how long till there's an exploit in the wild? A day?
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Why do you claim to be Michael Kristopeit when it is clear that you are not? What did he do to you? Sleep with your girlfriend? Sleep with your mother? Refuse to sleep with YOU?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I have two WP7 apps in the Marketplace, and I don't see this as a disaster, for several reasons: (1) I think it will help Windows Phones get a reputation as a homebrew-capable platform, which will help it build street cred; (2) Microsoft will certainly respond to each of these hacks with counter-measures (and actually the author of this very hack suggested a technique to frustrate it); (3) if people are ripping off my apps, that must mean they really want them -- and it's a fair assumption that most people would just pay a buck and not bother to go through the hassle to pirate them. (4) ... (5) Profit!!!
It's not that hard. There are several ways to do it (as are documented here). It's not even a real crack, you need to have a developer account to even side-load the apps on the phone (you can use the chevron cert also, but if you do that, you need to be careful otherwise all the apps will be erased when you update). In that case you can only upload 10 apps max at a time.
This is the second slashdot article talking about a WP7 hack that wasn't really a hack. People are having trouble jailbreaking the thing, so we keep seeing articles about meaningless hacks as everyone wants to know when it is really jailbroken.
Qxe4
(1) I think it will help Windows Phones get a reputation as a homebrew-capable platform, which will help it build street cred; (2) Microsoft will certainly respond to each of these hacks with counter-measures
Neither have been true of the iPhone, even though it's been jailbroken even before there were apps...
(3) if people are ripping off my apps, that must mean they really want them
That's the way I've always felt aout piracy. I don't think it represents many lost sales, if any, and in a way it can be good publicity... although I have to say you underestimate the number of pirates that simply horde stuff instead of collecting just apps they want. But again, that's not a lost sale either....
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Would you really want your phone locked down so you can't get at it? What is the objection here?
I think companies would turn a blind eye if the vast majority of people used these hacks for homebrew only because it sells more hardware and can lead to more software sales.
Not necessarily. Homebrew competes with legitimate sales of commercial games that use the same rules. Nintendo might argue for every copy of Lockjaw DS that gets downloaded and installed on an R4, it can't sell a copy of Tetris DS. Or Sony: for every copy of gpSP running Gleam or Luminesweeper, it can't sell a copy of Lumines or Lumines II.
I don't understand what the issue is here. Someone found a way to load applications on their device directly rather than from the only approved channel (Marketplace)... SO FRICKING WHAT?
How is that not a good thing and how can't the same thing be done on Android and IPhone? Android allows loading your own apps out of the box..no cracking required. There are cracks for the IPhone to load your own as well.
I'm really confused on the paid app download question.. Does marketplace really just let anyone download anything without first paying for it?? Really..??? This just seems absurd on its face. If MS is only relying on DRM for access control to content you have to pay for this seems really absurd.
Personally I think it more likely the people who are demoing their hack are simply attention whoring and misrepresenting the problem space.
I've had enough of the entire mobile device vendor lockin hell theme of WP7 and IPhone. Andriod is not much better. They need to fix fragmentation hell and their security issues. Above all loose the crappy java shit. All of the major smartphone platforms currently suck ass in my view either due to technical deficiencies or politics and greed.
It doesn't matter in my eyes; if people are going to want to crack the DRM, they will, if they don't want to steal, they won't. Hey, if I wanted to, I can probably look up how to pirate iPhone apps somewhere on the internet. Pretend these apps were music files or computer games for a second. We have always called for less invasive DRM on both fronts so that people who will to steal the software and files still will do it and people who want to pay and enjoy the product have no trouble doing so. People will always be able to crack the DRM until it gets so bad that it cripples the software. I don't see what there is to complain about here.
This Android bug seems pretty dour.
From the comments it seems like not every has this happen, but something to beware of!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
DirecTV --These fucking asshat thieves . The bill was misrepresented, the Box broke and they told me I had to renew for 2 years to get it fixed, Now I just checked and the audio signal coming out is so hot I can only turn my TV to 3 out of 0-100. FUCK DIRECT TV- If you have any other opinion - your a fucking liar or you work for these scum
nothing special here. move along. the zune software uses http to pull down its catalog. heres how you can get the "secret"
1. fire up fiddler
2. fire up zune
3. browse to a specific application and bring up it's own page
4. look at fiddler for the raw request and copy it
5. paste it into a browser. you'll see an rss feed of the single app
6. view the source of the page. look for CurrentBinary.xap
7. open in new browser window and download
the whole program can be written in about 30 lines of code. took me 1 hour to write an app to rip everything down. don't see the big deal with someone who did it in 6 hours.
Does this mean that I can download any app from the marketplace and install it on my WP7 phone for free? What's an "unlocked" WP7 phone?