Pirated Vista, Office 2007 Already on The 'Net

In today’s That-Was-Quick Department, pirates have already gotten their hands on Windows Vista and are circulating a “cracked” version of the operating system on the Internet.

Vista and Office 2007 have just finished development and are being made available to corporate customers in advance of their January 30 release. But if you know where to look online, you can find both products already.

In the case of Vista, the purported “crack” isn’t really a crack to get around the activation process. According to the techie hobbyist site Ars Technica, the hackers replaced components in the final code with bits from from earlier betas of Vista.

This allows the would-be pirate to use a product key that worked with the betas and two release candidates and skip the entire activation process.

In the case of Office 2007, the Enterprise edition has leaked onto the Internet, and because it uses a volume license key, it does not require activation over the Internet.

The free ride won’t last long. Microsoft said it was aware of the hacks, and how they were done. “The unauthorized download relies on the use of pre-RTM activation keys that will be blocked using Microsoft’s Software Protection Platform. Consequently, these downloads will be of limited use,” a Microsoft spokesperson told internetnews.com.

Full story: internetnews.com