Vista product activation hacked already

“Oh bugger.”  That, friends and lovable-enemies, is what I’m imagining the security team at Microsoft are muttering, thanks to the news that Vista’s beefed-up product activation has been circumnavigated with a brute-force keygen hack.  It’s not one for the impatient, however; it checks around 10,000 possible keys every 30 minutes, depending on system speed, and can take days to find a working combination.

Obviously SlashGear in no way condones software piracy, and we recommend that for full aftermarket support and system stability you should use an authentic copy of whichever OS you prefer.  What this all shows, however, is the eventual folly of DRM when faced with a network of intelligent and determined enthusiasts.  If I were Microsoft - or any developer looking to get maximum return from legal copies of my intellectual property - I’d be figuring out ways to build some sort of value-add into using properly-acquired programs as opposed to cracked versions.  If I could prove that having the authentic version tangibly benefited a user in some way, then that would encourage sales and also - most importantly, perhaps - repeat sales and product line investment.

KezNews [via Thinktechno]