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Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition was recently released, and included an updated version of Microsoft?s controversial product activation technology. Unlike the two versions of activation we?ve seen from Microsoft in both Office and Windows XP, Plus! DME does not allow an activation grace period. This editorial is written to address product activation as it?s seen in Plus! DME, as well as possible routes Microsoft could take with it in the future.
While the inner workings of product activation haven't changed much since its XP counterparts, there is one key difference. There is no grace period this time around. When you install Plus! DME, it immediately prompts you for a serial number issued by Microsoft to complete product activation. Until this is done, none of the applications in the package will run.
Microsoft has been under criticism for protecting a $20 application with product activation, but can this be a testing ground for changes to the system to prevent piracy? While this would not affect most legitimate customers, it will stop a good deal of the initial workarounds for activation we saw in earlier forms of WPA, including all of the reset style patches. As there is no grace period, the only valid ways for piracy would be a key generator or a true patch that disables activation entirely, along with a volume license key.
There are viable ways for Microsoft to stop the other means that have been used to circumvent activation as well. Keeping a closer watch on anyone who is attempting to decipher the algorithms used in pidgen.dll, as well as closer monitoring of internal employees from leaking ?helpful? information to software pirates, along with more strict penalties to those who do so will likely be two of Microsoft?s goals in the future of product activation.
Although that still leaves the volume license key route to circumvent product activation as viable, that too can be better protected. Keeping closer watch on issued VLK?s and the companies that purchase them is likely to happen, and a modified form of activation for those VLK?s is possible as well.
As shown in Windows XP, a patch to completely disable activation proved nearly impossible to create, and that was only WPA in its initial stages. Microsoft has since had plenty of time to better secure activation from workarounds. Only time will tell how activation comes in the future with Office 2003 and Windows Codename Longhorn, but if Microsoft takes the same route they have with Plus! DME for future activation, things look grim for software pirates to say the least. While some grace period for an operating system will likely be mandatory as a working internet connection after OS install is not guaranteed, the OS could in theory run in a reduced functionality mode until activated with Microsoft, which would make the creation of a patch for it more difficult.
After observing how activation in Plus! DME works through products freely available from SysInternals, including NTRegmon and NTFilemon, there is no denying that Microsoft?s product activation technology is nearly full proof when it doesn?t allow for a grace period. When Windows and Office XP were released, workarounds and cracks to activation were released before the products even hit retail shelves.
This hasn?t been the case thus far with the new Plus! pack. As there is no grace period to be reset, as a widespread and well known workaround for activation in Windows XP did, and the lack of VLK?s as it?s considered an end user product, not one used by corporations, Plus! DME may very well be the one piece of software that Microsoft has a very good chance of circumventing piracy with.
Only time will tell how activation will come with the next wave of major products that come out of the gates of Redmond, but if Microsoft keeps it more secure and harder to circumvent as they have in Plus! Digital Media Edition, things look bleak for software pirates the world over.
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