News

Microsoft Goes After Piracy Hacks with Vista SP1

It's no "reduced functionality mode"; still, Microsoft has other tricks to encourage those using pirated copies of Vista to upgrade to legitimate versions.

• By Becky Nagel
• 02/25/2008

With Vista SP1 expected to be released to the public next month, the company is going to "disable two of the most common exploits to our product activation technology," aka OEM BIOS or Grace Timer, wrote Senior Product Manager Alex Kochis on the company's Windows Genuine Advantage blog last week.

"This means that users who have the exploits loaded on their systems will find those exploits disabled by SP1, and they will be asked to activate their copy of Windows Vista," he wrote.

Kochis added, "It's important to note that this update does not disable the exploits it finds -- it simply alerts customers that exploits exist. When we first release the update that enables Windows Vista to detect the exploits we will also make available a separate removal tool as a download. In the future we will integrate the removal of the exploits with the detection."

According to Kochis, the fix will be pushed out to Vista users via Windows Update "later this month."

For more details, read the blog post here.