0 Remarks E-mail Print Windows 7 Greatest RTM Cracked, Fully Validated (Currently?)
By David Murphy, PCWorld Jul 29,
Office 2010 Standard Sale, 2009 10:50 AM
That didn't take long. It has only been a week since the official Windows 7 RTM announcement by Microsoft, but crackers have currently managed to activate and validate the tricked-out Greatest version of the OS. The hack is nothing new, as it borrows the same techniques used to bypass activation and verification of previous Vista editions.
According to Softpedia, crackers somehow obtained a copy of an OEM Windows seven Ultimate disc from Lenovo. From there, they were able to extract two critical bits of information:
Windows 7's OEM-SLP (system-locked pre-installation) product key and the OEM certificate for Windows seven Greatest.
But before these can be of any value, one first has to modify a system's BIOS to fool the operating system into believing that the PC is an authentic OEM machine. This is done by tweaking the values found in the Software Licensing Description Table (SLIC) that is stored in the system's memory during boot-up.
Once a person has disguised a system as a legitimate OEM machine, the OEM-SLP and OEM certificate allow for permanent,
Microsoft 2010 Office Professional Sale, validated activation of the operating system. To Microsoft,
Office 2010 Professional, the PC is no different from a functional OEM machine--and the "OEM machine," in turn, has no need to call back to Microsoft's activation servers for any kind of additional verification. That would defeat the convenient basis behind the creation of SLIC-based OEM activations in the first place.
Just because the OEM disc and keys came from Lenovo doesn't mean that the crack is exclusive to that brand. According to Softpedia,
Genuine Microsoft Office Professional 2007, the crack has proven successful on Dell,
Microsoft Office 2010 Key, HP, and MSI machines as well.
Bypass Geek Tech blogger David Murphy's activation on Twitter @Acererak.