What is OmniNerd?

Welcome! OmniNerd's content is generated by you, the reader. Through voting and moderation we strive to highlight the nerdiest of what's around and provide content that's a little more thought provoking than other sites.

Submit New Content

Voting Booth

I am most afraid of dying?

75 votes, 11 comments
5
Nerd-Its
+ -

Windows Vista Cracked Using OEM Bypass

Newspaper current event by VnutZ on 06 March 2008, tagged as microsoft, computing, and hacking

Hackers have long been defeating Microsoft's copy protection mechanisms with elegant solutions. However, for the past year, the only known way to defeat Vista's activation was to alter the clock on the PC, perform binary patching or replace particular system files with those from older beta versions. Even though the technique worked, it prevented users from applying various patches and hotfixes. A hacker group called Pantheon uncovered a clever trick to activating Vista using it's own mechanism against it. Microsoft allegedly allowed OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) to bypass the activation process by providing activation data files locally. Pantheon simply collected samples of the files and emulate the OEM environment allowing Vista to happily self activate.

Star This to Save in Your Profile Favorite