Microsoft's Piracy Check Hacked Again

WGA is intended to crack down on pirated use of Windows by requiring validation before letting users download non-security software from Microsoft. But according to the Web site noted in a posting to the Full Disclosure mailing list last Thursday, users can easily side-step the check by generating a code on a PC running an illegal copy of Windows XP.

Rather than let WGA run the ActiveX command -- which works only in Internet Explorer -- the crack suggests that people use the downloaded form of the anti-piracy verification -- a program called "GenuinueCheck.exe" -- run the illegal version of Windows XP in Windows 2000 compatibility mode, and then copy and paste the resulting code into the software.

Microsoft made WGA mandatory July 26 for users retrieving files from its Download Center, but within days, a simple end-around was posted to the popular Boing Boing blog site that required only a short JavaScript command.

Earlier this year, when WGA was still in its pilot program, a researcher posted a proof-of-concept scheme that also annulled WGA using the GenuineCheck.exe program.