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Single Verizon IP Address Used For Hundreds of Windows 7 Activations
An anonymous reader writes with this story from TorrentFreak: A presumed pirate with an unusually large appetite for activating Windows 7 has incurred the wrath of Microsoft. In a lawsuit filed [in] a Washington court, Microsoft said that it logged hundreds of suspicious product activations from a single Verizon IP address and is now seeking damages. ... Who he, she or they are behind address 74.111.202.30 is unknown at this point, but according to Microsoft they're responsible for some serious Windows pirating. "As part of its cyberforensic methods, Microsoft analyzes product key activation data voluntarily provided by users when they activate Microsoft software, including the IP address from which a given product key is activated," the lawsuit reads. The company says that its forensic tools allow the company to analyze billions of activations of software and identify patterns "that make it more likely than not" that an IP address associated with activations is one through which pirated software is being activated.
This great piece of history still rings true today:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists#/media/File:Bill_Gates_Letter_to_Hobbyists.jpg
Many here should read, learn, and abide...
Probably a single shop selling pre installed M$ apps and O$s or possibly a legit shop doing repairs and a bad tech who is not using the customer's licence information because it is "already installed on their machine" or some such.
Makes me wonder if this is a proxy, a Tor exit node, or some other form of gateway through which hundreds or thousands of PCs get some kind of Internet connection through.
On the other hand, my work has 30,000+ computers that communicate through no more than ten public IP addresses, so if we weren't using a corporate solution for Windows activations then we might pop up in much the same way.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not." -Bill Gates, Fortune Magazine, July 17 2007
I understand "one key, many IP addresses" as being suggestive of licence violations, but why would "many keys, one IP address" be?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Could it be a small computer business shop that did windows activation on the behalf of their customers?
IP address is part of the
product key activation data voluntarily provided by users
Ahhh. This must be some strange new usage of voluntarily, of which I was previously unaware.
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
That's what you get with your motherboard-network card switching frenzy.
Haha, IP Addresses are people now too
User is using a fresh vm image on boot snapshoted before activation.
Not all license keys are created equal. The one you get with your machine is only good for one activation, but there are also corporate keys issued to big companies that can activate many, or even unlimited, number of computers. Microsoft has a problem disabling the key because it would cause the legitimate customers' keys and computers to fail.
Does the Seatle public library offer free WiFi without a login?
If so then I would bet a lot of people go there to activate Windows illegally, to avoid getting caught.
If not then a Starbucks in the urban center.
In any case I am curious exactly what it is.
Wrong, its really verizon.
Not so mention that hackers cracked the key generating code for Windows 7. Same with MS office. They generate codes and try them until one works, and bingo you've got a legit code.
I don't know about that account, but I do know that at my workplace tons of legit copies of windows 7 have started complaining that they are invalid copies. Clearly Microsoft has issues with their authentication procedures.
maybe it's a single windows machine riddled with some virus
Nullius in verba
Not so mention that hackers cracked the key generating code for Windows 7. Same with MS office. They generate codes and try them until one works, and bingo you've got a legit code.
They've never cracked the key generating code for Windows 7. They just found ways to work around it.
In late 2001/early 2002 somebody figured out the algorithm to generated Volume License keys for Windows XP, and those don't need activation (so that companies with lots of computers don't have to activate 30,000 units). Starting With Windows XP Service Pack 2 Microsoft changed some things so that those generated Volume License keys wouldn't work any more. So you have to find a legit Volume License key somewhere (not all that hard to do).
Starting with Windows Vista, and continuing on to Windows 7, Microsoft changed things again. Microsoft changed the system for Volume License keys, making them not a viable option for pirates. Windows installed on OEM PCs was now using a system that referenced information in the computer's BIOS. Google "System Locked Pre-activation". So people just started flashing their BIOS with the necessary stuff. Windows thinks my homemade PC is a Dell.
The keys i got from Microsoft Dreamspark through my college have activated at least 5 (all mine) computers.
Good-bye
I'm not sure noticing massive re-occurrences of the same IP address really counts as using 'forensic tools'.
Microsoft has lowered the expectations of the whole of human civilization.
You'd think it would make more sense to simply shut off the "suspicious" activations for a given IP before they got to hundreds. That would seem to be a whole lot faster, easier, and cheaper than filing a lawsuit. (Let's do the math: 200 copies times maybe $100 each = $10,000.)
For comparison, I recently installed a new website using Wordpress, which I'm relatively new to. I got the excellent "Wordfence" security plugin running early-on, which uses a default limit of 20 failed logins within 5 minutes before it bans an IP. My new site evidently got attacked by a botnet (I assume) a few days later because there was a burst of 14 failed logins within the span of a few minutes, each one from a different country. The logins were pretty-much a tour of the ragged edges of the Internet: they came from Russia, India, Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, Belarus, Vietnam, etc. When all that failed because I had used an obscure admin account name and a strong password - and because Wordfence shut all those IPs down - the botnet evidently gave up.
Though a limit of 20 worked fine, even that seems like more than is necessary to allow normal/legitimate login failures, so I might lower it. I certainly wouldn't raise it to 200. Or file a lawsuit about it.
Why wasn't Verizon subpenaed for the identity of the lessees of the IP and named in addition to the Doe's? Additionally, how does John Doe (1-10) defend against process that hasn't been served, how can a court try a civil case in absentia?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I thought Microsoft removed desktop Windows from Dreamspark? It's not quite what MSDNAA used to be.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
At the same time it is also true that Microsoft is famously tolerant and encouraging of software professionals. Offering software at cost (like offering me Office 2000 for a hundred bucks, way back when), providing dev tools and beta products for free or close to it, and tolerating staggering levels of out-and-out piracy...in the interest of having their products used by a truly large sample size.
If it wasn't for Microsoft, we would still be on mainframes and mini-computers. Paying jacked up prices. For crap, frankly.
The only part of the Microsoft game I don't care for is trying to ship old wine in new bottles (i.e. every version of MSOffice since 2000) and especially the force-marching of us to a worse product (the downward progression away from XP). With XP, Microsoft could have created a decent 64-bit version. They could have given us (essentially) unlimited RAM usage on 64-bit XP. And they could have left it to us to decide when to move on to a product...IFF we thought that product was better. But then they would have had to make a real effort at making future Windows products truly better.
I come here for the love
If you can't reinstall it 100's of times until it starts working, what else are you supposed to do? Pay Microsoft for support, that smells like anti-trust to me.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
A small shop installing *legal* windows 7 onto PCs would be a normal explanation and would be a single IP with many activation. How the heck do they come to "one IP+many key==pirate" ? A pirate would activate only 1 key. In fact it would be more like 1 key+many IP.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
using Windows 7 instead of Windows 8.
I got Windows 8 keys from it, before they merged 32/64 bit versions into one key.
Good-bye
Someone at Verizon give the White House this IP!
https://db-ip.com/74.111.202.3...
Wow, it's not like every PC has a non shared T1 running direct to Mickeysoft.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
It's a store that pre-activates Windows on your new pc, for your convenience.
no, I don't have a sig
From a Slashdot submission last year (OK it was one of mine, but that is NOT the point!):
Four people accused of sharing illegal copies of the movie "Elf-Man" persuaded a federal judge there is not enough evidence to support copyright infringement claims against them. ... make factual contentions regarding an Internet subscriber's infringing activities based solely on the fact that he or she pays the Internet bill," Lasnik wrote in the order.
Elf-Man LLC, producer of the direct-to-DVD release "Elf-Man" sued Eric Cariveau et al. in Federal Court a year ago, accusing them of sharing a peer-to-peer file of the movie.
Elf-Man claims the defendants illegally copied and distributed the movie online.
"Despite the industry's efforts to capitalize on internet technology and reduce costs to end viewers through legitimate and legal means of online viewing such as through Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, there are still those that use this technology to steal motion pictures and undermine the efforts of creators through their illegal copying and distribution of motion pictures," Elf-Man's attorney Maureen VanderMay wrote in the complaint.
U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik granted Elf-Man's motion to initiate discovery on the IP addresses of defendants, but noted that "the risk of false positives is very real."
"It is not clear that plaintiff could
Elf-Man named 18 individual defendants in its first amended complaint. A default judgment was ordered against two of them; claims against the Doe defendants were dismissed. Claims against four other named defendants were also dismissed on the grounds of their implausibility.
Source: http://slashdot.org/firehose.p... (news for nerds, my arse!)
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
DAZ activator is cleaner and does not report you by trying to activate.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've activated at LEAST 150 to 200 Windows 7 keys on my IP in Australia over the past 3 years (re-building one of my 4 machines regularly, friends and machines I also sell)
There's only ONE thing which Microsoft should be focusing on here.
IS IT A VALID KEY
Period, that's it - is the key valid? Not being used a second time? Yes or no, period. Doesn't matter if he or she activates 1 or 1000 codes, for fucks sake.
Oh! It was optional to provide that info?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
long lost Microsoft activation server?
"GEM ... was pig awful, but better then Windows at the time."
GEM worked. It ran Ventura Publisher. I had investigated previous typesetting platforms; they cost $1.4 million.
The 1st version of Windows was just a toy, a dishonest suggestion that Microsoft should get respect, in my opinion. The second version of Windows had problems with fonts.
Far later, Windows 98 had an unstable file system.
MIcrosoft makes more money if its products have flaws.
I thought Microsoft removed desktop Windows from Dreamspark? It's not quite what MSDNAA used to be.
I never remember seeing desktop Windows in Dreamspark. It's why I still have a laptop running Windows Server 2008R2.
100s does not mean much if this IP is a corporate gateway. In a campus with a dedicated gateway/proxy one may observe just such behaviour. Now if it is a continuous stream of registrations things change. In any case $soft may well enough research it just to see what is hidden behind it and quite frankly I would like to know too to see if my non-assumption is correct. Regards .A.
Dude/dudette, you're doing it wrong. Seriously. And not "holding it wrong" wrong, but just fundamentally wrong. I have never had a Win 7 activation issue, and I don't even try particularly hard.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Now if that's where this IP physically terminates, that's interesting..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I have a computer repair business with a non-static but rarely changing IP address. We sold and activated Windows on at least 100 desktops last year and had to reinstall Windows on probably about 50 plus activate them. So if they think 100 is suspicious, they're idiots.
A TOR exit node operated by the LA PD? Makes sense in a evil big brother kind of way..
https://db-ip.com/74.111.202.3...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I cut my teeth on Applesoft BASIC, but I used only the integer subset; the floating point was too demanding, although now I don't recall why. Whether it ran too slowly, was too resource intensive, or-- probably-- was too hard to program and debug. I did some home accounting/budgeting, but did it all in pennies rather than dollars, and avoided division operations.
And that was a brilliant idea.
Floating point can have weird rounding errors if you don't understand clearly how they behave. (see here for an example).
Using an integer number of a smaller unit (pennies) is better in those cases, and "LONG" data type can still represent a big amount of pennies for your situation.
Several real-world finance software do actually use the same approach (a integer "BIGNUM" of a small unit, instead of floating point).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Cyberforensic methods? Yet they allowed the activations? Surely the activation shouldn't work if it's a pirate.....
Yes, I do.
One story: Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster (July 17, 2005)
Most people don't have the technical ability or time to deal with computer problems. They buy new computers. That makes more money for Microsoft, because Microsoft get the full wholesale price again, even if the new computer has the same Microsoft operating system version.
Also, I wrote this article that discusses the conflict of interest: Microsoft Windows XP "end of life": Conflict of interest.
Hell the Commodore Amiga's DOS was FAR superior to MS-DOS. The ONLY reason Microsoft's stuff became more popular is because they were better at marketing and at "lock in" than anyone else. The Amiga was a FAR superior OS than what Microsoft had at the time. Hell the AmigaOS was doing Preemptive Multitasking when Windows was trying to still figure out how to do Task Switching properly! Hell Commodore even GAVE out to the public domain their intuition library - which was their multitasking library. Bill Gates cr@P for software is still JUST THAT CR@P! Look at the leaps and bounds Linux has made in the past decade alone. Heck Microsoft was turning a blind eye to the piracy of early versions of windows for the SOLE reason to get as many people using it as possible. Once they had the monopoly and and run most of the smaller players out of the market THEN they started clamping down on piracy of their software!
F* Microsoft!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Naval Surface Warfare Center Corona Division.
It is in the service area and could be the fixed address
of some tunnel for security purposes. Simple google proximity
search no direct personal knowledge.
This topic could get very very quiet.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.