Hack cracks Microsoft anti-piracy check

Microsoft Corp. acknowledged Friday that hackers were able to bypass a process implemented earlier this week to ensure users of Microsoft's update services had legitimate copies of Windows before downloading updates and content from those services.

A posting on the Boing Boing Web log Thursday claimed that a JavaScript command string could bypass a check instituted Wednesday by Microsoft through the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) 1.0 program.

According to the posting, users can override the WGA by pasting javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all') in the address bar of their browser and pressing enter. The code "turns off the trigger for the key check," according to the Web log posting.

The WGA program makes users run a program that verifies that their Windows operating system is not pirated before they can use Microsoft's software update services. Microsoft was running it as a pilot program since September but made the validation system a requirement on Wednesday.

A Microsoft spokesman said Friday that hackers indeed succeeded in cracking the WGA program, and that the software giant will fix the flaw they had exploited in an upcoming version of the WGA program.

The exploit came soon after the Wednesday launch of the program, the spokesman said. "Within 24 hours hackers claimed to have circumvented the process and it appears that they did," he said. "This is a hack that exploits a feature that enables repeat downloads in the same session so that a hacker never has to validate as a genuine user," he said.

The move to lock out pirated copies of Windows from the update sites is part of Microsoft's effort to fight software piracy, which is a major issue for the software vendor.

The Boing Boing hack is not the only way to get around WGA's restrictions.

David Keller, founder of PC consulting and services firm Compu-Doctor in Cape Coral, Florida, was able to change his Internet Explorer settings to bypass WGA when he experienced a flaw in the program that flagged a legitimate product key on a customer's Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 as invalid.

"The customer was the original owner, no hardware was changed since purchase, nor was Windows ever reinstalled on the system," Keller said in an e-mail to the IDG News Service. WGA rejected the operating system, nevertheless, which prevented Windows Update from working, he said.

Keller wrote that he did not have much luck with Microsoft support technicians, so he found a way to bypass the validation process on his own and moved along with the update. He accomplished this by disabling the Windows Genuine Advantage add-on within his browser's Internet Options. By clicking on Tools/Internet Options/Programs/Manage Add-ons, Keller disabled the WGA add-on. He then exited Internet Explorer and was able to do a Windows Update without the validation step.