Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 29th Jul 2009 22:29 UTC, submitted by JayDee
"Windows 7 Ultimate has been cracked. The pirate milestone, reached almost three months before Windows 7 is set to hit General Availability on October 22, 2009, was achieved via OEM instant offline activation that passes Windows Genuine Advantage validation and keeps the operating system permanently activated. Previous cracks weren't as solid: while they may be working now, they can easily be disabled by Microsoft. This one won't be so easy."
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Member since:
2007-08-20
Seems that to use the leaked keys, one would need to use a bootloader to patch the bios SLIC area to fool Windows 7 into thinking it is running on a signed OEM pc. This is the same method used to bypass Vista activation, eg by the vstaldr crack. The news, then, is that a key has been leaked, not that a new crack or bypass method has been found. But it was inevitable that such a key would surface eventually.
Here's the original article from mydigitallife: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/07/29/windows-7-ultimate-cracked...
Edit: One other point of interest is that the single leaked product key works for *all* OEMs, compared to leaked keys for Vista where a different key was needed depending on which OEM's SLIC certificate was being faked.
Edited 2009-07-30 09:57 UTC