Keygen Beats Windows Product Activation

Betanews ^ | February 15th, 2002, 1:07 AM | Nate Mook, BetaNews

[antidisestablishment]

"All IP protection technologies will be cracked at some point; it's just a matter of time," Allen Nieman, Product Manager of Activation at Microsoft, told BetaNews in an interview last May. But this week Nieman's concession became a reality as a key generator capable of creating unique, valid installation and activation codes for Windows XP came to light.

While patches and cracks for Windows Product Activation have existed since the release of Windows XP, would-be pirates were forced to physically modify system files and risk invalidating their operating system with updates. If it desired, Microsoft has the ability to instantly void such cracks or leaked keys with service packs or security patches.

The key maker, apparantly released by a group calling themselves "The Blue List," poses a more significant problem to Redmond - discerning legit keys from those generated by ill-intentioned users.

Microsoft has always been quick to point out that pirated copies of Windows are ineligible for technical support and warranty protections. Although if the created keys are indeed genuine, a user running a shared or downloaded copy of Windows will appear no different to Microsoft support personnel than one who purchased a copy in the store.

"The only way Microsoft would know it's a generated serial in this case is if customer service asks for the x0- number on the CD and that is highly unlikely," an informed source told BetaNews.

Most surprising is the relatively little work it takes to compute a valid key. Tests by BetaNews resulted in two keys and twenty-nine failures in just under seven minutes of heavy CPU usage. As the included information states, "not every random cd-key [can] be made valid, so it usually needs more than one try to compute a valid cd-key." Both keys were each able to correctly activate a retail copy of Windows XP in the test lab.

But in the eyes of Microsoft, WPA may have already far exceeded the company's expectations. "The measure of success is not completely stopping software piracy, which is probably an unattainable goal. Success is more likely measured in increased awareness of the terms of the license agreement and increased license compliance," said Nieman last summer. With WPA one of the hottest topics of 2001 and Windows XP out-selling its predecessors, there is no doubt Microsoft has done just that.

Microsoft was unavailable for comment at press time.

[antidisestablishment]

Pretty quick considering the complexity of MS's product activation. Actually, that probably made it easier. Better luck next time, Bill.

[txzman]

The program appears to work as well - I let it run for about an hour and went through 100 tries for it to generate 4 valid Win XP Pro Keys - for educational purposes only. I have no need to try the keys, but the way the program works, it looks like they have it figured out.

The notes in the file appear to have been written by someone in Asia - the grammar is typical of pidgin English seen in tech support manuals from China and Taiwan.

[txzman]

And no, I am not going to pass on the link for the program :)

[Demosthenes]

there are others who could use a good "educational experience" bub...but NOOOOOOOoooo, instead of sharing the link and the knowledge, you wanna keep us down, and uneducated, because you're a damn conservative after all....

[js1138]

90 percent of Windows sales are pre-installed on new computers. No major OEM is going to fake an activation key. And computers more than two years old aren't fast enough to run XP, and have little to gain by trying.

[goldstategop]

FR does not support warez :) In case anyone has any doubts, for the record I am running 100% genuine Microsoft XP Windows Home and Windows XP Professional OS's on my desktop and laptop PCs respectively.

[goldstategop]

Au contrare. My IBM Thinkpad 600E is about FOUR YEARS OLD with a Pentium II processor running at 366Mhz and Windows XP Professional runs smooth as a baby's bottom, considering there's only 160 MB RAM inside. Don't believe everything you hear from Redmond. :)

[Fish out of Water]

bti

[Harrison Bergeron]

According to zdnet.com, Win2K (with SP2 installed) benchmarks slightly faster than WinXP for most applications, inclusing gaming and MS Office. The gimmicky bells and whistles - not to mention product activation - that come with XP don't yet offset the bugginess and security issues. The best I can establish is that XP is a cardboard condo built on the rock solid foundation of 2K.

The only reason to hack XP, AFAIC, would be for the sport of it. It just ain't ready for prime time.

[js1138]

I think you're inside the line with the 366. Windows NT/2000/XP has good memory management and will stay alive with less than optimum memory. But it's probably eating 100 megs before you load any programs. I just looked at my memory usage with IE, Lotus Notes, and Word running -- 150 megs, which is under your limit.

[spycatcher]

Lot's of peripherals never had, and never will have, solid drivers for Win2K.

[spycatcher]

Previous related thread here

[goldstategop]

I think that would be a problem if you were multitasking several large applications at once. I don't do that so it runs fine as it is for me.

[SamAdams76]

You can get a copy of Windows XP Home for about $99 these days. With a price that low, why even go through all the trouble? I always said that piracy of software is inversely proportional to the price. Microsoft has finally learned. It used to cost you $500 to buy the full version of Office. Now you can get it for a fraction of that price. If only the record companies would see the light and drop the price of a music CD to about $5. Overnight that would quadruple their sales volume (at least) and put a stop to the piracy problem. Sure, people will still trade MP3s but if they download something they like, they are far more likely to spend the $5 in order to get the full .wav files, lyrics and artwork, etc., that comes with purchasing the genuine article.

[chuckles]

XP was cracked BEFORE Bill released the ballons back in Oct. I have heard that XP Pro doesn't need all the activations the home version has, so 1 crack and yer done. I have 98 now but I will probably go to 2000 rather than XP. If you read the licence agreement from XP, you give MS permision to upload and download things on your computer without asking. Need to keep up to date, don't ya know.

[blackie]

Wrong, I have an old 400mhz with 128k mem and a newer 933mhz with 256k mem that have XP home installed on them, both run fine. My wife uses the 400 and never runs more than three programs at the same time. I run many at the same time on the 933, including nineteen open (five in FR) windows in the browser.

Neither machine has crashed since I installed XP, I love it !!

Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!

Molon Labe !!

[js1138]

Both of your CPUs are within the recommendations, but XP will run more stuff faster with more memory.

[snowfox]

I have and have had quite a few peripherals for my PC. I have never had any problems with Win2k. As long as service pack 2 is installed, win2k will run drivers for Win98 without a hitch. Compatibility has never been an issue for me. And I can't imagine peripherals not having these drivers, since NT/2000 is the business standard.

[antidisestablishment]

The only real thing I can see that XP offers that is not in 2000 is dll management. It allows multiple versions of dlls which should stop a lot of conflicts. XP is also easier to install and networking is ridiculously easy (along with the security flaws).

I am running 98SE and am sick of the memory leaks and crashes. I load a lot of software on and off for review and I need stability more than anything. I am leaning toward 2000, but it will be a month or two til I switch. 2000 should work just fine, especially since I am looking for SMPT. Direct deals offers great deals on MS OSs.

There is no reason to hack it. I just found it amusing that they were able to generate keys so quickly. The original cracks were not this advanced. The keys are as 'legit' as those of MS origin. I just oppose spyware on principle.

[antidisestablishment]

Drivers are the bane of NT/2000. It depends on the manufacturer, but even some pretty standard hardware gets glitches. XP seems to be a good start toward consolidating the business with the consumer world.

Either way, I would still like to see a good competitor to windows. Just pipe dreams I suppose.