Media Center Key Accidentally Gives Pirates Free Windows 8 Pro License

MrSeb writes "In an amusing twist that undoubtedly spells the end of some hapless manager's career, Microsoft has accidentally gifted pirates with a free, fully-functioning Windows 8 license key. As you have probably surmised, this isn't intentional — Microsoft hasn't suddenly decided to give pirates an early Christmas present (though the $40 upgrade deal from Windows 8 Release Preview is something of a pirate amnesty). ... The bug involves the Key Management Service, which is part of Microsoft's Volume Licensing system. Pirates have already hacked the KMS to activate Windows 8 for 180 days — but this is just a partial activation. Now it turns out that the free Media Center Pack license keys that Microsoft is giving out until January 31 2013 can be used on a KMS-activated copy of Windows 8 to turn it into a fully licensed copy of Windows 8 Pro. "

Comments

the 'activation' component

[alphatel]

In order to get to the point where you can request the Media Center license, you first have to activate using a command line and kms server (internal or external)

Re:the 'activation' component

[Joce640k]

Only works for "large scale" pirating?

That proves this was deliberate - to try to get more people to install Windows 8.

Re:the 'activation' component

[v1]

That means that this is only beneficial for large scale pirating.

Like in China? The "large scale pirating" is generally where they lose most of their money. When a high schooler pirates his windows pro it's not like he was going to pay full retail price if he didn't manage to pirate it, that piracy didn't cost them a sale, despite whatever the BSA will try to convince you of otherwise.

But an entire building full of windows machines in a medium size business somewhere, that's another story entirely. That's where they really, legitimately, DO lose sales. And that's exactly where this little "bug" will be useful. This is a huge problem that kicks them where it hurts.

Re:the 'activation' component

[RMingin]

Not true, there are many 'cracked' KMS servers out there, which are a VM with the most minimal services, running Windows Server in Core mode, and all ports but the KMS ones closed and blocked. Those same servers are patched to keep 25 fake activations renewed at all times, so any and all requests to the "cracked" KMS server result in activations. As far as MS can tell, they are legitimate, since KMS activations are not verified online, except with the original server.

I don't see this getting patched or fixed easily. It will be a lot of work. or it'll require doing things that annoy large volume customers.

Re:the 'activation' component

[alexgieg]

That proves this was deliberate - to try to get more people to install Windows 8.

And that works very fast. Near here street vendors are already offering fully functional pirated Windows 8 DVDs.

Re:the 'activation' component

[EXrider]

I don't see this getting patched or fixed easily. It will be a lot of work. or it'll require doing things that annoy large volume customers.

Since when has MS been averse to doing things that annoy large volumes of paying customers in the name of ineffective attempts at anti-piracy?

Speaking as a sysadmin who's been annoyed and inconvenienced in time-sensitive disaster recovery scenarios, by pointless product activation snafus, probably never.

Re:the 'activation' component

[jonadab]

> > it'll require doing things that annoy large volume customers.
> Since when has MS been averse to doing things
> that annoy large volumes of paying customers

Do you not see a difference between "large volume customers" (which, admittedly, should really be hyphenated) versus "large volumes of ... customers"?

For Microsoft, there's a very big difference. Microsoft certainly doesn't mind annoying large volumes of their customers, as long as they're NOT the large-volume customers. This distinction explains, among other things, why Automatic Updates cannot be set to go ahead and install but wait up to 24 hours for the user to shut the computer down. Normal people are annoyed, because they don't want whatever they're doing with the computer to be interrupted. Microsoft's official answer is to set the updates to happen in the middle of the night. This answer satisfies Microsoft's large-volume customers, because they all leave all their computers running all night for no reason while the building is locked. Normal people shut the computer down at night, so then they get interrupted for a mandatory restart during their working day, but normal people don't matter, because they're not large-volume customers. This could be solved by adding a "wait up to 24 hours before forcing a restart" setting, but Microsoft can't be bothered to do that because the large-volume customers don't care.

Re:the 'activation' component

[MrNiceguy_KS]

Sounds like a self-punishing crime.

Re:the 'activation' component

[EXrider]

Yeah, I'm not talking about Windows Updates though. We have free tools like WSUS, or SCCM (not free) available that give you fairly good control over the patch management processes. Security updates and patches are generally a good thing, we want those, they have benefit and value. Compared to WGA, which has absolutely NO "Genuine Advantage" to a company that creates system images with installation media from legitimate sources, and doesn't utilize PC's from sketchy OEM's with pre-loaded software. We know our software is "Genuine" and not tampered with because we paid dearly for it, had it shipped to us, or downloaded it directly from Microsoft's sources ourselves and checked the hashes. Anti-piracy measures like KMS only create additional administrative overhead in a business context, especially in a small to medium size business where we get little to no volume purchase discount anyways. Yeah KMS is free, but it's one more logically unnecessary system that we have to manage just to appease MS.

What RMingin was saying, is that this fix will affect the anti-piracy methods, which will affect everyone, but only temporarily annoy the pirates.

TL;DR: Dear MS, it shouldn't be easier to pirate your F'n software, than to purchase and use it legitimately, quit pissing off your paying customers.

Re:the 'activation' component

[marcosdumay]

Hell. There goes the argument about piracy being victimless...

Re:the 'activation' component

[davester666]

Accountants and MBA's will tell you:

Don't sell the software for what it's value is, sell it for what you can get.

Meanwhile at Canonical

[crazyjj]

Hey, we're giving our OS away for free, no license or hack needed!

Anyone?

Hello?

Re:Meanwhile at Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: What do Ubuntu and Windows 8 have in common?

A: You can get both for free using bittorrent.

Q: Which of the two features unusable applications with a convoluted, misprioritized UI designed by a retarded aspie?

A: That's a trick question - both do!

-- Ethanol-fueled

Re:Meanwhile at Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, we're giving our OS away for free, no license or hack needed!

That which is given has no value?

You're right. We should shut down all charities immediately. After all humanitarian charities didn't charge the recipients for all that food and medical aid they give to the poor and needy around the world. So obviously the food provided no nutrition and the medical aid didn't help treat any diseases. All because the recipients weren't charged money for them. </sarcasm>

Really though I'd rather use Free Software than pirate an OS that's not worth paying for. That is valuable to me. Long-time Linux user here. I appreciate that some people want or need Windows. Good for them, they found something that fits their needs. But the fact I can legally download Linux for free absolutely does not mean it didn't meet my needs just as well as Windows meets the needs of others. In fact I have a non-tangible benefit that comes with it: the gratitude that people around the world would actually donate their time and hard-won expertise to provide people like me with such a good experience.

Money is simply a tool to facilitate trade. That's all it is. Don't let it completely dominate your entire view of everything. As anyone who has ever truly loved someone knows, some of the very finest things in life are monetarily free.

Re:Meanwhile at Canonical

[ameen.ross]

Emphasis mine:

some of the very finest things in life are monetarily free.

Mod parent way up

Re:Meanwhile at Canonical

[bingoUV]

No license required to use, but required for distribution. The licenses you mention are required for distribution. Since the context made it clear distribution is out of question, your pedantry is misguided.

Re:Meanwhile at Canonical

[advantis]

I was about to uphold my point by pasting this from the GPL:

2. Basic Permissions.

All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met. This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program. The output from running a covered work is covered by this License only if the output, given its content, constitutes a covered work. This License acknowledges your rights of fair use or other equivalent, as provided by copyright law.

emphasys mine,

but then I scrolled down:

9. Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies.

You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance. However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.

emphasis mine here as well.

So I guess you're right. Thanks for making me look it up and update my knowledge.

Too expensive.

[ZorinLynx]

Windows 8 really needs to be less expensive. The cost is ridiculous. Even Apple, King of Expensive Shit, sells their OS upgrades for $20.

Come on, Microsoft. Stop being asstards.

Re:Too expensive.

[Sez Zero]

Apple sells hardware. Microsoft sells software.

Telling MS to sell Windows cheaper is like saying that Apple should be giving away iPhones.

Re:Too expensive.

[Xest]

£15 - £40 for an upgrade is too expensive for a piece of software you probably use day in day out every single day?

If that's too expensive then what the fuck do you call every other peice of software on the planet that you probably get far less usage out of such as computer games that last for about 6 hrs play time and cost the same price?

Of all the criticisms of Windows 8, price isn't one of them. It's the first Windows OS that actually has sane pricing options.

Re:Too expensive.

[SrLnclt]

It is cheap this time around. $40 to get an upgrade from a previous version of windows, and 98% of people already have a previous version.

I usually run the most current version of windows, but never actually purchased it (aside from when Win98 shipped on a HP machine I bought back in 2000). Typically I go through the cat and mouse game when MS occasionally catches up to the pirates and limits updates or other software (like media center) without extra activation checks. For $40 this time around I figured it was worth not having to fight with activation periodically for the next few years.

For what its worth, this "upgrade" key worked perfectly with a clean install.

Re:Too expensive.

[telchine]

Apple sells hardware. Microsoft sells software.

[fanboy]Apple sells dreams, Microsoft sells nightmares[/fanboy]

Re:Too expensive.

[Ambiguous Coward]

On the other hand, upgrading a household of OS X computers costs 0*(number of computers) + $20, whereas upgrading a household of Windows computers costs, at a minimum, $40*(number of computers).

Re:Too expensive.

[Ambiguous Coward]

(Or rather, the other other hand. I'm not sure how many hands this creature has.)

Re:Too expensive.

[Pieroxy]

Since you decided to play hard to understand, here it is all laid out for you:

Microsoft's business model revolves around selling software.

Apple's business model revolves around selling hardware.

This is not to say Apple doesn't make software, but they make software for the purpose of selling hardware. While Microsoft makes hardware for the purpose of selling software.

Re:Too expensive.

[dubbreak]

So that justifies high prices? I'd expect the elasticity of demand on a product like Windows would mean more purchases in the consumer world if the price was lower (i.e. less pirating).

The flip side is corporate customers are much less elastic. They must buy Windows licenses, so they do, regardless of price. There is also the OEM market, which does get lower pricing, but that's not exposed to the customers and is huge business for MS. Upgrades to software may have been common in the 90s (3.11 -> 95 -> 98 -> XP), but now people often upgrade their hardware and get the latest MS OS that way (thanks to hardware being so disposable these days). Can't really blame people as you can buy a decent laptop for the price of my first CD burner.

Could MS charge a bigger price difference on home vs pro? Sure. Would it make them much more profit? I'd assume no, as they have some pretty smart people working there. Either the market isn't big enough to make a big difference or it would cause issues with their corporate or OEM (e.g. OEM expect X% off retail licenses.. retail go down, they expect their license cost to go down).

Re:Too expensive.

[Cinder6]

If an update made things worse, then you wouldn't buy it at any price point--including free.

Re:Too expensive.

[sconeu]

That would be the "gripping" hand.

Re:Too expensive.

[chrisxcr1]

If you buy an upgrade from the App Store you are allowed to install it on all of the Macs you own. That does not work for businesses though. For business use you do have to buy one upgrade for one machine.

Re:Too expensive.

[Cinder6]

It depends on your timeline. Tiger and Leopard were huge updates. Snow Leopard, while it didn't have much in the way of user-facing updates, did have significant changes under the hood, not least moving to a pure 64-bit OS (on supported hardware) and culling PPC support. Lion and Mountain Lion had less changes than Tiger/Leopard, yes, but there are still some significant differences. Auto-resume, system-wide dictation, versions, and iCloud are all pretty big.

Re:Too expensive.

[Nemyst]

Correction, Apple sells dreams only to crush them a year later.

Re:Too expensive.

[mcgrew]

Forty bucks is twice what an Apple customer pays for an upgrade. I paid $0 for kubuntu, which has features W8 lacks while W8 has nothing kubuntu lacks except loss of productivity with that stupid metro interface. I just don't see how anyone would pay forty bucks for that turd.

Re:Too expensive.

[plover]

Yes, but that's a whole year away. In just ten months the iPhone++ comes out and we can all start dreaming again!

Re:Too expensive.

[amorsen]

To get a legitimate license for Mac OS, you need to pay for an expensive hardware dongle.

Re:Too expensive.

[Fatal Darkness]

Nice troll. Here's the real text: (bolded emphasis mine)

A. Preinstalled and Single-Copy Apple Software License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, unless you obtained the Apple Software from the Mac App Store or under a volume license, maintenance or other written agreement from Apple, you are granted a limited, nonexclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple branded computer at any one time. For example, these single-copy license terms apply to you if you obtained the Apple Software preinstalled on Apple-branded hardware.
B. Mac App Store License. If you obtained a license for the Apple Software from the Mac App Store, then subject to the terms and conditions of this License and as permitted by the Mac App Store Usage Rules set forth in the App Store Terms and Conditions (http://www.apple.com/legal/ itunes/ww/) (“Usage Rules”), you are granted a limited, non-transferable, non-exclusive license: (i) to download, install, use and run for personal, non-commercial use, one (1) copy of the Apple Software directly on each Apple-branded computer running OS X Lion or OS X Snow Leopard (“Mac Computer”) that you own or control;
(ii) If you are a commercial enterprise or educational institution, to download, install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software for use either: (a) by a single individual on each of the Mac Computer(s) that you own or control, or (b) by multiple individuals on a single shared Mac Computer that you own or control. For example, a single employee may use the Apple Software on both the employee’s desktop Mac Computer and laptop Mac Computer, or multiple students may serially use the Apple Software on a single Mac Computer located at a resource center or library; and
(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software, for purposes of: (a) software development; (b) testing during software development; (c) using OS X Server; or (d) personal, non-commercial use.
The grant set forth in Section 2B(iii) above does not permit you to use the virtualized copies or instances of the Apple Software in connection with service bureau, time-sharing, terminal sharing or other similar types of services.

Source: http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX1082.pdf

huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's this license key and activation nonsense?

Sincerely,
Confused Linux User.

I disagree with the premise.

[Hans Adler]

As far as I know Microsoft *does* have a strong interested in being pirated in those jurisdictions in which they are not going to sell much anything. It's a question of market share and staying the monopolist.

Re:I disagree with the premise.

[Vanderhoth]

I was about to say the same thing. It's kind of like how Adobe "allows" their photo shop suite to be pirated. They don't formally allow it and will adamantly deny it, but the truth is you get high school and collage students using the product for free, then when they get to the corporate world, where the money for Adobe really is, the corporations by the product that considered the norm for the field.

Right now MS is having a hard time pushing Windows 8 few individuals want to use it and there's no way any major corporate entity is going to switch because they don't want to spend money to buy a product that's probably going to need weeks or months to for people learn to use properly when the existing product works just fine. By having Win8 pirated a wider population of individuals will be willing to use and get use to using it, which will be beneficial and essential to having Win8 adopted by the larger corporate community.

Re:I disagree with the premise.

[Vanderhoth]

If microsoft don't care about piracy, they've got a funny way of making their legit customers jump through ever increasing online activation hoops for shits and giggles.

Sorry to say, but based on the fact that DRM schemes only affect legit customers, since the first thing pirates do is subvert or strip out the DRM, nothing you said has anything to do deterring piracy and has everything to do with making it look like they're deterring piracy. Basically all it does is make it appear to legit customers and stock holders that there and DRM is a required solution, while only making it mildly difficult for pirates, until one person figures out the newest scheme, then booty ahoy!

CS6 hasn't even been out for a year yet, I know because I have a license for the Web premium package, and there is virtually no difference between CS5 and CS6, at least that I make use of, Photoshop and Dreamweaver work pretty much the same. For a high school or college student, they don't require CS6 to be up-to-date. If it doesn't already exists, I haven't gone looking since I have a license provided by my employer, give it time, there will be a work around for the current CS6 DRM, probably just in time for CS7 to come out. While to me CS6 would be a major expense personally, to my employer it's a drop in the bucket.

And still no one wants it.

[hawks5999]

This sounds less like a career limiting move a d more like a marketing ploy to get a bigger installed base for Vista 2.0 (or is it Millennium Edition 3.0?)

Re:And still no one wants it.

[Nemesisghost]

Yeah, I was like, "Wait, Win8 is being pirated? By who?" Those that want it, or will end up with it, are those that are too stupid/ignorant to know how to avoid it or get something better.

one way to increase windows 8 adoption

[cheap.computer]

I guess msft read the recent reports of abysmal sales for Windows 8 and decided to use its proven strategy of promoting piracy of Windows to drive up adoption.

Re:one way to increase windows 8 adoption

[causality]

I guess msft read the recent reports of abysmal sales for Windows 8 and decided to use its proven strategy of promoting piracy of Windows to drive up adoption.

I really don't understand what they're doing with Win 8.

I recently bought a netbook that came with Windows 7. I strongly prefer Linux, so it wasn't very long before I repartitioned the drive and installed the OS of my choice. But before I did that, I decided to gave Windows 7 a try, just for the hell of it. I was a bit impressed, actually.

I generally don't like the Windows way of doing things. I prefer the transparency of a *nix system, the storage of important settings in plain text files, the central package manager instead of being nagged about updates for lots of individual programs, the way I don't need malware scanners, the ease with which open source programs can be modified and studied, the fact that drivers are generally maintained with the kernel and not by third parties, the power of the command line, the ease of automation and scripting, the huge variety of choices for graphical desktop, the simple fact that my Linux distro of choice (Gentoo) doesn't assume I'm clueless and thus doesn't get in my way, the ease with which I can find out what caused a problem and fix it and it stays fixed, and the general Open Source philosophy.

Those things about Windows that I don't like are not going to change anytime soon. So it's just not for me. But, having said all that, when I tried Windows 7 I thought that Windows had come a long way. It was stable, solid, and slick. It seemed to me to be what most people wanted: a highly improved and polished XP.

Then I learn about Windows 8 and I'm wondering what the hell the people at Microsoft are thinking. It's as though they want to sabotage themselves. What do they hope to gain here? Is it just that the days of Win 9x made them too arrogant and they don't appreciate that people have more options now? Or what? I haven't seen them pull something like this since either Microsoft Bob or Windows Millenium.

Re:one way to increase windows 8 adoption

[SEE]

What was Microsoft thinking? Thinking had nothing to do with it; they had no choice.

See, Windows 98 SE was followed by Windows Me, which sucked more.
Windows Me was followed by Windows XP, which sucked less.
Windows XP was followed by Windows Vista, which sucked more.
Windows Vista was followed by Windows 7, which sucked less.

Windows 7 accordingly had to be followed by a "sucked more" release.

Freebie

[GerryHattrick]

Just admit that you can't even *give* it away.

As I surmised

[oodaloop]

In an amusing twist that undoubtedly spells the end of some hapless manager's career, Microsoft has accidentally gifted pirates with a free, fully-functioning Windows 8 license key. As you have probably surmised, this isn't intentional

Yes, in fact, this is exactly what I surmised after seeing the word "accidentally". That usually implies lack of intention.

Interesting hack, and pretty "Oops" on MS' part

[idontgno]

On the upside, you can have a fully activated copy of Win 8 with relatively little effort.

On the downside, it'll still be Windows 8.

I think I'll pass, thanks.

win8 selling so poorly the gave pirates keys

[Dan667]

I would not be surprised if this "accident" was not intentional to gain some marketshare.

Just a key, not a license.

[leuk_he]

This is not a valid license. It is just a key that happens to work arround the current version of their anti-piracy control. But if you use this, and get an audit, you will have to shell out the full amount of a retail key ( 4 to six times the the price of a basic oem version). It might stop working at any time if you apply updates supplied by MS. They know what keys are published, and can block them if they want.

This is very disappointing coming from a site that is very rigorous when it comes to the free GPL license. The MS license has at least to be paid.

Re:What about windows 7?

[pla]

You don't even need a key or a (code-based) hack to run Win7 forever without activation - You can run it in fully-functional pre-activation mode forever.

Google "slmgr -rearm" and "IR5". Note that IR5 doesn't install any sort of actual cracks, it just scripts a few simple tasks you can do manually if you don't trust it.

Re:M$

[somersault]

I used Visual Studio in the early 2000s and I liked it, but I like other IDEs too. Delphi was what I used for developing GUIs for ages. The options for doing so in Visual Studio back then were a lot more complicated, either that or I just didn't know where they were. I find Eclipse a bit annoying, but I tried Netbeans recently and I like it. I also started using Emacs a few years ago for things like C, scripting and web page editing, and I like it a lot.

So yeah, Visual Studio is one of the few decent products that MS produce (or at least it was 10 years ago), but it's pretty silly to suggest that people won't like the alternatives available to them.

Changing business models

[DragonWriter]

"Apple sells hardware. Microsoft sells software. " Mission statements aside, they both sell software and are in competition with each other.

Apple is a hardware company (that also makes software to support the hardware) that has been slowly pivoting to sell online services and serve as the middle man in content delivery.

Microsoft is a software company (that sometimes also makes hardware to move the software) that has been slowly pivoting to sell online services as serve as the middleman in content delivery.

Apple dropping prices on iPhones and Microsoft dropping prices on Windows and similar software both make sense in that context -- where they are competing with firms that are already optimized to sell online services and serve as the middle man in content delivery and which are also delivering hardware and software -- at low prices -- to support the online services / content delivery business (e.g., Google, Amazon.)

In related news

[GameboyRMH]

Dirty needles accidentally give users free AIDS.

RHN Activation Key

[Frankie70]

Here - https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/solutions/2474

You can read about license keys and activation nonsense.

Re:Too expensive...for Buffett

[BoRegardless]

Warren Buffett in the late 90s as a traveling buddy of Bill Gates was asked if he invested in Microsoft and Warren replied that he didn't invest in things in which he didn't understand the long term profitability.

Warren in retrospect was entirely 100% right. If you can't come up with good reasons for people to buy your products at what is attractive to them, they will figure another product to buy.

Probably 95% of the users of MS Word could do everything they normally need on Open Office software. That doesn't bode well for MS long term.

Microsoft and piracy

[bmo]

It has been known for years, and publicly admitted by Bill Gatess 14 years ago that piracy is Microsoft's key to building and keeping market share. While Ballmer has threatened in the past to turn up the anti-piracy knob to 11, that was all bluster. The goal is not to eliminate piracy, but make it just inconvenient enough for most people.

If you are willing to jump through the hoops to pirate Windows and Office, Microsoft would rather you do that than try any alternative at all. Because they know that those who try alternatives and get by with "good enough" are gone for good.

Bill Gates' original "Open Letter to Hobbyists" can be completely disregarded as the writing of a naive young man soon to figure out that piracy builds market share.

My "diagnosis" of the situation is that this was not by accident. My prediction for the future is that Microsoft will not fix this, or at least make a half-hearted attempt to make it look like it's harder. They will not close this hole.

--
BMO