Hackers crack Vista Activation Server

Pirates have released another ingenious workaround to Vista's copy protection: a hacked copy of Microsoft's yet-to-be-released volume licencing activation server, running in VMware.

Volume Activation 2.0 is one of the more controversial features of Vista: it means that every copy of Vista has to be activated, even the Business/Enterprise volume licenced editions.

However, to make life easier for administrators, Microsoft worked in a more convenient system of in-house for en masse activation of PCs called KMS – Key Management Service.

The idea behind KMS is that you have a single PC running KMS which can then handle activation for all your Vista clients, so that they don’t have to connect back to Microsoft every single time.

The downside of KMS is that the activation is only good for 180 days, to discourage people bringing in their home systems, activating them and wandering off again.

Bearing in mind that KMS wasn’t scheduled to be released until next year, pirates have managed to get hold of KMS and produce a standalone, fully-activated KMS server called “Windows Vista Local Activation Server – MelindaGates”. Tongue-in-cheek of course…the first “cracked” version of Vista was called Vista BillGates.