Frederick Noronha (FN) on Wed, 22 Jun 2005 00:13:42 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> Indian breaks open Microsoft's anti-piracy programme |
http://sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?id=13877760 Indian breaks open Microsoft's anti-piracy programme Tuesday, 21 June , 2005, 13:47 New Delhi: Breaching the much-touted 'impenetrable' Window Genuine Advantage (WGA) of Microsoft, an Indian researcher has shown the global software leader how fragile its claims were. With a potential to hurt Microsoft's business across the world, Debasis Mohanty has broke open WGA through an 'easy-to-exploit' weakness in the software for generating illegal copies of Window XP programme. Microsoft confirmed the claims of the Bangalore-based researcher Debasis Mohanty but sought to downplay it saying "it represents very little threat." A company spokesperson said they did expect counterfeiters to try a number of different methods to circumvent safeguards provided by WGA. WGA is an anti-piracy programme that keeps a tab on consumers whether they are running legitimately licensed copies of Windows XP. Mohanty has posted a detailed proof-of-concept programme on the high-profile security mailing list of the software giant, showing how the WGA validation check can be tricked to generate key codes for use on illegal copies of the software. Using a secondary Microsoft validation tool called 'GenuineCheck.exe', Mohanty claims to have made it possible for people to trick the safeguard mechanism and download and run the supposedly restricted software from Microsoft's Download Center on a PC, he said. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net