anyweb Posted April 13, 2007 Report post Posted April 13, 2007 Windows Vistas OEM Hacks There appear to be two primary variants of OA 2.0 hacks circulating. One is similar to the XP approach I described above where actual editing of the BIOS on the motherboard is done to make the motherboard appear to be from an OEM. It is a pretty labor-intensive process and quite risky. If you mess up editing the BIOS of any motherboard, you can quite easily render it permanently useless. So while this method works today, it's potentially hazardous and really doesn't scale well to large numbers of systems, which makes it less of a threat. The second variant does not change anything in the BIOS itself, but uses a software-based approach to fool the OS into thinking it's running on OA 2.0-enabled hardware. And while this method is easier to implement for the end user, it's also easier to detect and respond to than a method that involves directly modifying the BIOS of the motherboard. I do want to say something here about how we plan our responses. As I've said in the past, we focus on hacks that pose threats to our customers, partners and products. It's worth noting we also prioritize our responses, because not every attempt deserves the same level of response. Our goal isn't to stop every "mad scientist" that's on a mission to hack Windows. Our first goal is to disrupt the business model of organized counterfeiters and protect users from becoming unknowing victims. This means focusing on responding to hacks that are scalable and can easily be commercialized, thereby making victims out of well-intentioned customers. full article > http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/archive/2007/04/...bios-hacks.aspx Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
