Microsoft may have inadvertently given Windows 8 pirates a working activation key

Back in early August, the final copy of Windows 8 was leaked online which we assume was much to the dismay of Microsoft. Pirates got ahold of the copy and distributed it, but thanks to Microsoft’s activation technology, the pirates had yet to figure out a way to fully activate the operating system. Instead pirates had to rely on third party KMS servers that would activate a copy for 6 months before it was required to be reactivated again. Not a huge deal but not exactly elegant, nor was it ideal either. Now thanks to what appears to be a slip up by Microsoft, these pirates have managed to find a way to fully activate Windows 8 without having to reactivate it again every 6 months.

It seems that Microsoft is giving away a free Media Center upgrade to Windows 8 users, an offer that is expected to run until January 31^st 2013, and it looks like the pirates have discovered that the key used to upgrade Media Center will at the same time fully activate a pirated copy of Windows 8! According to the folks at The Verge who tried it out on a test machine, this procedure works and they have since reached out to Microsoft for a comment on the matter. We can only assume that Microsoft will be hurrying to patch this up ASAP, but in the meantime it looks like the pirates will be getting away scot-free.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Computers
Tags: Microsoft, Windows 8