Posted by Unknown | Posted in Windows | Posted on 9:09 PM
Piracy problems
The activation was also compromised when XP was fooled into thinking that a desktop PC was a laptop in a docking station, rather than a self-contained machine. In this configuration some components that wpa watches would be in the docking station rather than the portable computer. XP dutifully ignored any changes made to these components.
XP activation items
network card address
graphics card ID number
CPU serial number
SCSI host adapter number
IDE controller number
hard disk serial number
CPU type
Ram size
Volume ID
CD-Rom serial number
In total Mr Hartmann found a way to make the Windows XP activation technology ignore six of the ten components that it monitors. Mr Hartmann said another two can vary in only a small number of ways among all machines making it possible to create a "universal" wpa file that should activate XP on most PCs.
"With some smart tools that do automatic matching of hardware and activation-files it would be possible to 'activate' nearly 90 percent of home-user machines without Microsoft knowing anything about it," Mr Hartmann told BBC News Online.
Mr Hartmann expects to see activation file sites springing up on the web that offer wpa files tied to PCs with particular configurations thus ruining Microsoft's chances of cutting piracy.
"Should Microsoft stick with current version of wpa they will have wasted lots of money for call-center-employees, webservers and the technology itself," he said.
But a spokeswoman for Microsoft said that the version of the activation system that is in the pre-release versions of Windows XP is weaker than that which will ship with the finished version.
"The things that have been highlighted as a way of potentially bypassing activation will not be in the final code," said the spokeswoman. "The final code is going to be very different to what we have now."
"Product activation is not completely fixed in place at this time," she added.
The activation was also compromised when XP was fooled into thinking that a desktop PC was a laptop in a docking station, rather than a self-contained machine. In this configuration some components that wpa watches would be in the docking station rather than the portable computer. XP dutifully ignored any changes made to these components.
XP activation items
network card address
graphics card ID number
CPU serial number
SCSI host adapter number
IDE controller number
hard disk serial number
CPU type
Ram size
Volume ID
CD-Rom serial number
In total Mr Hartmann found a way to make the Windows XP activation technology ignore six of the ten components that it monitors. Mr Hartmann said another two can vary in only a small number of ways among all machines making it possible to create a "universal" wpa file that should activate XP on most PCs.
"With some smart tools that do automatic matching of hardware and activation-files it would be possible to 'activate' nearly 90 percent of home-user machines without Microsoft knowing anything about it," Mr Hartmann told BBC News Online.
Mr Hartmann expects to see activation file sites springing up on the web that offer wpa files tied to PCs with particular configurations thus ruining Microsoft's chances of cutting piracy.
"Should Microsoft stick with current version of wpa they will have wasted lots of money for call-center-employees, webservers and the technology itself," he said.
But a spokeswoman for Microsoft said that the version of the activation system that is in the pre-release versions of Windows XP is weaker than that which will ship with the finished version.
"The things that have been highlighted as a way of potentially bypassing activation will not be in the final code," said the spokeswoman. "The final code is going to be very different to what we have now."
"Product activation is not completely fixed in place at this time," she added.
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