this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
407 points (99.5% liked)

Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

60951 readers
299 users here now

⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.

Rules • Full Version

1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy

2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote

3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs

4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others



Loot, Pillage, & Plunder

📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):

🏴‍☠️ Other communities

FUCK ADOBE!

Torrenting/P2P:

Gaming:


💰 Please help cover server costs.

Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Time of death: 4:22 PM UTC September 26th

Notes, please read:

For those of you who don't know, HWID was the holy grail for Windows activation, letting you generate licenses straight from Microsoft licensing servers, being registered as fully legitimate in microsofts servers and letting you keep the activation permanently, even after windows reinstalls being completely undetectable and with nothing on your system being modified. If you're still using outdated activation methods and you missed out on this, I'm sorry

Existing HWID licenses are left unaffected. Only new requests are blocked, no licenses were revoked.

By the way, MAS still works and is the best option for Windows/Office activation. For permanent Office activation use it's Ohook method (supports subscription products such as 365 as well) and KMS38 for Windows

ALL OTHER ACTIVATION METHODS ARE STILL WORKING, ONLY METHOD AFFECTED IS HWID.

All HWID activators are affected, not only MAS

Around that time, Microsoft servers unexpectedly started blocking the licensing requests HWID activation method sends to Microsoft. This was a slow rollout that spanned over a few hours, at the moment the exploit is completely dead. The best options for Windows activation now is KMS38 or vlmcsd.

Patching this would boost illegal key reselling websites which causes more harm to Microsoft than HWID exploit. We can only wonder why they patched this.

{"code":"BadRequest","data":[],"details":[],"innererror":{"code":"PermanentTSLRejection","data":[],"details":[{"code":"113","message":"avsErrorCode","target":null}],"message":"The Purchase Service rejected the provided TSL; the client should destroy the TSL.","source":"PurchaseFD"},"message":"The calling client sent a bad request to the service.","source":"PurchaseFD"}

TLS=Temporary Signed License=The tickets HWID activation sends. Microsoft servers are now just responding with "kill it."

Transferring existing HWID licenses to other computers using Microsoft account is broken too.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 68 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm so happy now that I've finally fully migrated to linux.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (4 children)

What'd you end up on, out of curiosity? I was on Fedora for a couple years, but with the whole Red Hat thing (that I don't fully understand the implications of), I switched to openSUSE Tumbleweed. Still have love for Mint, though, after all these years.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (3 children)

The whole red hat thing (you mean the centos drama?) has no implications whatsoever on fedora, fyi. If you liked it feel free to go back to it.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm using endevour os now, though I started on mint a few months ago and loved it. The wife is using mint now and just commented yesterday that it was a very seamless transition from windows. Only problems have been related to nvidia being dumb.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Glad you're enjoying it. I haven't messed with Endevour much myself, as Arch-based stuff is a little more hands on than I want to be, personally, most of the time. I think the switch to Linux is easier than a lot of people think. It really just takes some patience, knowing that it'll be an adjustment, and accepting that you'll need to find alternatives to some apps.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I'm still a Fedora guy, started on Ubuntu years ago, tried arch (loved AUR) and all the Ubuntu derivatives but once I hit fedora it just stuck.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

i want to switch but acer laptops man

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

I made the mistake of fucking around and finding out with the AUR on Manjaro (before all the major drama). Broke it - though, it did make it 2 years beforehand, amazingly. But yeah, totally about Fedora. Fedora made me stop distrohopping.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

RedHat still pushes their changes upstream whenever possible, and is one of the largest OSS contributors. These changes were to make it harder for companies like Oracle who feed off of RHEL. The same reason you can’t view RH support docs any more, Oracle used to reply to their paid users (running RHEL clones) with copy/paste from the RH docs.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I always thought microsoft allowing HWID activation was a deliberate move to get as many people to use windows and got them enrolled into windows updates, which bolster their market share and allow them to push ads/promotion for their various services to windows start menu. I think microsoft got a lot more to lose from ending HWID activation.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 2 years ago (14 children)

Great time to switch to Linux

load more comments (14 replies)
[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 years ago (9 children)

Good thing i switched to linux

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (3 children)

How do you know if someone runs Linux? Don't worry, they'll tell you.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago

Good. Free and Open Source Software should be the standard.

Hopefully I don't need to point you towards the endless list of enshittification for why.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

How do you know someone participates in pirating?
Don't worry, they'll tell you.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)
load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I guess Microsoft didn't like that their support staff cracks Windows with HWID activation using MAS when their infrastructure breaks down for legit licenses.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago

K38 still works. But yeah just switch to Linux.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Sorry for possibly a stupid question, but what's the point of activating Windows?
I never seriously used Windows, but I have a Windows 7 VM that's not activated, and it works. Just the wallpaper is black. Also most of our school computers don't have activated Windows, yet it seems to work fine, there's just the watermark. And on some it shows the "You may be the victim of..." message. Same seems to be the case for Office 2016 installed on those. Other than the "non-genuine" message, it works.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I guess it's just a personal thing. I personally cannot stand the "Please Activate Windows" watermark and MAS is such an easy tool that it just makes sense to do it. It's not like this announcement kills MAS, you can still use the other activation methods

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

this is even more funny since there are apps that literally target this shit and remove it. Its unregistered, and the watermarks are removed, allowing you to forget the existance you are in. (disclaimer: I didn't do W11, but I doubt they were that good at their job)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

In Windows 11 they lock down the customization/personalization options, but you can get around that with some registry edits regardless. So I guess it's pretty straightforward to build a third party tool that replaces the internal customizer.

But... MAS was so nice and easy.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Possibly(?) related official notice https://devicepartner.microsoft.com/en-us/communications/comm-windows-ends-installation-path-for-free-windows-7-8-upgrade

Never spent the time to figure out what KMS actually did but seems like licenses weren't validated when upgrading from 7 -> 8 / 11

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

Now, you can't perma-crack your new PC with a "real" HWID key, then years later reinstall Windows and keep your "real" license anymore! And you can't upgrade anymore on that new PC either! You have to patch Windows every time!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago

By the way you can still use a windows 7 key for windows 11, I just have an old laptop with the OEM sticker on it, works fine on every computer I ever tried. Consider just trying to find one in the trash or just take a photo of one on a computer in public that won't likely get reinstalled.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

After reading through the docs on the MAS site, KMS38 still looks pretty robust. I get that it’s not ‘permanent’ but are there any major drawbacks aside from having to re-run MAS after a fresh Windows install?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

RIP. We hardly knew ye.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

I hope this means we'll finally get activation methods that patch windows itself rather than playing along with their key system. Obviously it can be done since Windows AME has activation Functions completely removed yet it will never try to deactivate itself.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I tried doing a full swap from Windows earlier this year. I do a lot of local game streaming from my gaming pc to my laptop and I had issues getting this working. Didn't have the energy to keep looking for solutions so I just went back to windows. Next time I try I will probably keep my pc on windows and only swap my laptop to Linux. One step at a time.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

What's that Ohook method you mentioned for office activation?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

—-I haven’t used windows in a while, but for curiosity’s sake what are the best ways for registering windows now?—-

edit: i’m bad at reading, muses the relevant line

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I should really switch over to Linux full time. I basically have no uses cases that require Windows anymore. Not that this activation patch tipped me over the edge or anything. Microsoft is allowed to fix bugs in their software.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago
load more comments
view more: next ›