Vista Cracking Down on Pirated Copies
Microsoft is going to be able to disable and severely restrict usage of its new Vista products if the copy of the product is suspected to have been an illegal copy or a pirated version. The good news is that it will still be able to download patches to keep it up to date. The bad news is that this could be a vulnerability that attackers could use to create a denial of service condition in Vista.
Years ago, during the Worm Wars of Nimda, Code Red, blaster and many others, one of the reasons that the malcode was so widespread was because Microsoft refused to allow pirated copies to access Windows Update to receive patches. As a result, the millions of pirated hosts in Korea, China and Russia became a hacker’s playground for botnets because the systems were so easily compromised. Microsoft has reversed that practice, and noticeably, the state of the Internet is a little more stable as a result.
From the AP here:
Vista to take hard stand against piracy
SEATTLE – Microsoft Corp.’s forthcoming Windows Vista will take much harsher steps to curtail piracy than previous versions of its operating system, including crippling the usefulness of computers found to be running unlicensed copies of the new software.
The world’s largest software maker said Wednesday that people running a version of Windows Vista that it believes is pirated will initially be denied access to some of the most anticipated Vista features. That includes Windows Aero, an improved graphics technology.
If a legitimate copy is not bought within 30 days, the system will curtail functionality much further by restricting users to just the Web browser for an hour at a time, said Thomas Lindeman, Microsoft senior product manager.
Under that scenario, a person could use the browser to surf the Web, access documents on the hard drive or log onto Web-based e-mail. But the user would not be able to directly open documents from the computer desktop or run other programs such as Outlook e-mail software, Lindeman said.
Microsoft said it won’t stop a computer running pirated Vista software from working completely, and it will continue to deliver critical security updates.
The crackdown shows how much more seriously Microsoft has started taking Windows piracy, which for years has been extremely widespread in areas such as Russia and China. The Business Software Alliance, a software industry group, estimates that 35 percent of software installed on PCs worldwide is pirated.
And I wish Microsoft would hurry my Vista RC1 disk to me. Im running its last beta version, and it is quite buggy.
