James Delahunty
18 May 2007 19:46
It has been a few months since Microsoft unleashed its new Windows Vista operating system to the public, and during the time while it has sold millions of legitimate copies, crackers have been trying to get around its anti-piracy measures which Microsoft claims to have significantly improved over XP. There has been a variety of options to pirates, including workarounds to delay activation indefinitely and the OEM BIOS cracks that have floated around.
However, pirates do show that they complain even about stuff they get for free, and many find even the BIOS hacks too hard to follow. Warez group, NoPe, recently gave these lazy gits a surprise with a release of Windows Vista that works straight from installation, no serial input necessary and no activation to crack or get around.
Amusingly, it would appear that this "release" needs even less manual labor than the copies of Windows XP that are distributed with key generators and cracks and feedback in all the regular places shows some users find it works properly whatever the case, others claim it will only work as promised on a Dell machine.
Of course it remains to be seen how Microsoft will respond to this attack and all the rest since Vista'a launch when it comes to Windows Update and Vista's special features. We do not write about these attacks on Vista security to support piracy at all but there has been such media attention to Microsoft's promise to tackle piracy of its products on all fronts that it's important to report on the company's progress in doing so without keeping aspects of it as taboo.
Source:
Inquirer