Windows Vista, Longhorn to get new anti-piracy measures

Any bets how quick the hackers community will break these limitations? Anyone googled the net for it yet?

Quickly I guess pupa. I doubt however Microsoft is trying to stem piracy because they consider it theft. What is the use of charging high prices if people can make copies so easily? They are not doing it for the lost revenue. They are doing it to protect their high price empire. The sad reality, just like with Telkom, is that we need it to a large degree... How else will I play my games?

I am keen to buy a legal copy when it comes out. saves a bunch of hassle etc. Thing is though, I have three machines I need to put it on. Estimates I have seen say that the full veriosn of Vista (with Aero etc) will weigh in at R2-3k. So I'm looking at R6000 - R9000. I can buy a whole new machine for that.

Of course Microsoft says that pricing has nothing to do with piracy. All I know is I'm not spending R5k+ on an OS upgrade. R3k will be fine.

pupa said:

Any bets how quick the hackers community will break these limitations?

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It is going to be much worse than the simple WGA that they have now on XP ... it will be an updatable server side type of encryption scheme which would render hacking it rather moot.

Your hacked copy of Vista might work for a week before it is shuts down again when you go online and then you have to wait for a fix to come from your fav release group ... how many people is going to be accept this hassle ???.

tibby.dude said:

Your hacked copy of Vista might work for a week before it is shuts down again when you go online and then you have to wait for a fix to come from your fav release group ... how many people is going to be accept this hassle ???.

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Your hacked copy of Vista will not go online like the normal one.

tibby.dude said:

It is going to be much worse than the simple WGA that they have now on XP ... it will be an updatable server side type of encryption scheme which would render hacking it rather moot.

Your hacked copy of Vista might work for a week before it is shuts down again when you go online and then you have to wait for a fix to come from your fav release group ... how many people is going to be accept this hassle ???.

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Not Me! But stay offline then!

AFAIK, this protection scheme isn't targeted at home users, rather the resellers who sell a PC with a bundled copy of Windows Vista installed. The problem is, quite a few resellers all over the world will just install a single copy of windows on all the computers they install.

They also aren't really targeting corporates who for the most part are too scared to install pirated software after MS and the thingy (BSA type bunch) went after companies who did so a few years ago.

So realistically, what happens if this new windows is "uncrackable"? Is little Johnny going to be able to convince mom and dad to shell out a few thousand bucks for a new OS? Are YOU going to shell out a few thousand bucks for what amounts to XP with a spit'n'shine? An uncrackable windows would spell doom for MS (and I cant think of a nicer bunch of people for it to happen to btw). But MS is smarter than that, and they know that if its impossible to get a copy of Vista, people will turn to Linux (and Mac OSX in 1st world countries) for their candy (Search YouTube for XGL if you think Vista looks the biz).

Why is XP as crackable as it is? Surely a multi-billion dollar company with some of the best developers available could have made it more secure!

As the underpant gnomes would say:

1. Make Vista uncrackable.
2. Wait for sales to drop then allow the cracks to go unpatched thus stopping migrations to the competition.
3. ???
4. Profit!

Microsoft says that the new technologies are necessary to fight software piracy, and adds that end-users can also benefit because they are less likely to be exposed to faulty or compromised software.

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And dropping prices are also necessary to fight piracy. I would be willing to pay R300 for a copy without all the hassles which I may install on any amount of machines I want to. But R2k-R3k for software that effectively loads slower and takes up more space? Not in your life.

pupa said:

Any bets how quick the hackers community will break these limitations? Anyone googled the net for it yet?

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Will come out the day before Vista hits the shops so you're all set.

Darkling said:

Why is XP as crackable as it is? Surely a multi-billion dollar company with some of the best developers available could have made it more secure!

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Ok, let me explain a few things here. If you have access to the code you can hack it. There have been countless protections used over the decades ranging from compression which also reduces executable size but slows down loading times to encryption which makes the code completely unreadable and with both methods there's no way too change just a few bytes as it would effectively change the whole executable. They all have one thing in common, they have ALL been hacked. If you have access to the executable you have access to the mechanism by which it functions. Bottom line - if you can run it you can hack it. Microsoft do not employ miracle workers so it's no different for them.

Prometheus said:

Ok, let me explain a few things here. If you have access to the code you can hack it. There have been countless protections used over the decades ranging from compression which also reduces executable size but slows down loading times to encryption which makes the code completely unreadable and with both methods there's no way too change just a few bytes as it would effectively change the whole executable. They all have one thing in common, they have ALL been hacked. If you have access to the executable you have access to the mechanism by which it functions. Bottom line - if you can run it you can hack it. Microsoft do not employ miracle workers so it's no different for them.

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Thanks for your explanation, and let me add that I have cracked the protection of quite a few programs in my time so I know what you mean when you say "if you can run it, you can crack it". But there is a difference between cracking something like Photoshop and cracking Windows. The first and most important point is size difference. Windows has a lot more places where it can hide protection mechanisms. The other point is that Windows updates can patch any hole, any time. Also when you consider that certain protections can take several weeks to crack (Try cracking ASProtect in less than a week), and that Windows can sneak in an anti-crack update the second a crack appears, a virtually uncrackable windows isn't too far fetched. Besides, who would want the hassle of re-cracking windows every 3-4 weeks.
And while I may be happy to use a cracked, un-updated Photoshop, I would be far more concerned about an un-updated Windows.

All this aside, my point, I think you will agree, still stands.
Microsoft does NOT seem very interested in ensuring every single copy of windows out there is legal. They could be doing a LOT more to prevent cracks than they are currently doing.

Please also note that I said a Multi-Billion dollar company can make their software more secure, not uncrackable.

Basically, the point I am trying to make is that it is dead easy for MS to make Windows extremely hard to crack, and at the very least extremely annoying for the users of cracked versions.
But who would benefit from that? Not Microsoft, thats for sure. They would lose millions of users worldwide.

P.S. If this is a little incoherent, I appologise, I have been awake for nearly 24 hours so far...

Darkling said:

... But there is a difference between cracking something like Photoshop and cracking Windows. The first and most important point is size difference. Windows has a lot more places where it can hide protection mechanisms. The other point is that Windows updates can patch any hole, any time. Also when you consider that certain protections can take several weeks to crack (Try cracking ASProtect in less than a week), and that Windows can sneak in an anti-crack update the second a crack appears, a virtually uncrackable windows isn't too far fetched. Besides, who would want the hassle of re-cracking windows every 3-4 weeks.
And while I may be happy to use a cracked, un-updated Photoshop, I would be far more concerned about an un-updated Windows.

All this aside, my point, I think you will agree, still stands.
Microsoft does NOT seem very interested in ensuring every single copy of windows out there is legal. They could be doing a LOT more to prevent cracks than they are currently doing.

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I see the point. Yes it is possible for Microsloth to make Windows very hard to crack and very annoying to use a cracked version in the least. Currently it is relatively easy with virtually all the protection in one directory and I'm not talking about the windows directory. Microsoft can implement something similar as what Codemasters did with FADE where your cracked copy does not get disabled but simply "break". It took months for the top hacker groups to finally crack it which led to some people thinking that it never existed and that it was just buggy code.

But how effective would it really be to reinstall the copy protection in every update? People will simply recrack it again. They would have to change the protection with every update which Microsloth effectively did with SP1 and SP2. Most users will still just roll back to a previous working update until a patch is available. Microsloth will need a whole new department to handle the coding for the protection. I know they have the means to do that but in my experience it would just be a waste of resources as people will always find a way around it. They can make it very hard to crack or at least very annoying, but I think in the end they would just be shooting themselves in the foot. The intent is not to make it impossible to use an unauthorised copy, but to make the user aware that he/she is using one to stop resellers from bundling it with their systems. I agree with that to an extent, but there are better ways of doing this than to annoy the user that is merely installing it on more systems or doing an upgrade or borrowed a copy from his friend.

P.S. If this is a little incoherent, I appologise, I have been awake for nearly 24 hours so far...

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LOL, there is a thread for that you now.

Prometheus said:

They can make it very hard to crack or at least very annoying, but I think in the end they would just be shooting themselves in the foot. The intent is not to make it impossible to use an unauthorised copy, but to make the user aware that he/she is using one to stop resellers from bundling it with their systems. I agree with that to an extent, but there are better ways of doing this than to annoy the user that is merely installing it on more systems or doing an upgrade or borrowed a copy from his friend.

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Just the point I was making (I think ).
MS doesnt want uncrackable windows, it would lose people to Linux and/or BSD.