News
Microsoft Goes After Piracy Hacks With Vista SP1
- By Becky Nagel
- February 26, 2008
"
Reduced functionality mode" isn't coming back, but Microsoft has other tricks in the pipeline to encourage those using pirated copies of Vista to upgrade to legitimate versions.
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," a.k.a. OEM BIOS and 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.
In the meantime, Microsoft is releasing an update via Windows Update for some versions of Vista via Windows Updates that simply identifies the exploit.
"It's important to note that this update does not disable
the exploits it finds -- it simply alerts customers that exploits exist," Kochis wrote. "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."
For more details, read the blog post here.