Americas

  • United States

Asia

Oceania

by Paul Kerstein

Microsoft Anti-Piracy Program Hacked

News
Aug 01, 20051 min
CSO and CISOData and Information Security

It only took days for hackers to find a way aroundMicrosoft’s new anti-Piracy program, Windows Genuine Advantage. An AssociatedPress article on The Boston Globe reports that the program requiresusers to go through a validating process to ensure they’re running a legitimatecopy of a Windows operating system before downloading updates, however, it can by bypassedby entering a simple JavaScript command in the web browser’s address bar andhitting enter. When that’s done, the validation does not run and the user istaken directly to the download. Microsoft is investigating to make sure theglitch is not a security problem. The hack appears to only work when a useris trying to download software through the Windows Update Service. Read more.