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Two controversial aspects of Microsoft's Vista were conspicuous by
their absence at yesterday's launch event - neither digital rights
management nor the way Microsoft will shut down or reduce the
functionality of software it considers to be an illegal copy were
mentioned.
But Microsoft's DRM protection has already been broken according to a
well-known security blogger and Microsoft Student Ambassador.
DRM restricts the kind of media content you can use on your Vista
machine. This is meant to make life harder for pirates but in
practice, as Sony learnt, it can make life harder for honest users
too.
Alex Ionescu said on his blog that he had written code which could be
used to bypass Vista's DRM - more details here. Ionescu has not
published the code but promises in a later post to publish "some safe,
generic, proof of concept code that targets what I believe is a flaw
in the Code Integrity/Driver Signing model.".
Ionescu should know what he's talking about. He's a (possibly soon to
be former) Microsoft Student Ambassador. These straight arrows are
apparently: "the most talented students from around the world for
their dedication, passion and involvement with Microsoft."
This is likely to be the first of many such problems as an informal
army of unwashed hackers starts to target the software.
Meanwhile, the company has begun drawing flak on its UK pricing for
the new software.
Gates was challenged yesterday on why the price of Vista is the same
in dollars and in pounds - the basic edition is £99 in the UK versus
$99 in the US. One US dollar is currently worth 51 UK pence.
Gates told the BBC: "Well we try and keep our prices largely in line
country to country, I haven't followed currency rates that may have
made that drift."
Just for the record Bill, a pound has been costing at least $1.90 for
the best part of a year, according to MSN's currency calculator here.®
http://www.theregister.com/2007/01/31/vista_drm_hacked/
their absence at yesterday's launch event - neither digital rights
management nor the way Microsoft will shut down or reduce the
functionality of software it considers to be an illegal copy were
mentioned.
But Microsoft's DRM protection has already been broken according to a
well-known security blogger and Microsoft Student Ambassador.
DRM restricts the kind of media content you can use on your Vista
machine. This is meant to make life harder for pirates but in
practice, as Sony learnt, it can make life harder for honest users
too.
Alex Ionescu said on his blog that he had written code which could be
used to bypass Vista's DRM - more details here. Ionescu has not
published the code but promises in a later post to publish "some safe,
generic, proof of concept code that targets what I believe is a flaw
in the Code Integrity/Driver Signing model.".
Ionescu should know what he's talking about. He's a (possibly soon to
be former) Microsoft Student Ambassador. These straight arrows are
apparently: "the most talented students from around the world for
their dedication, passion and involvement with Microsoft."
This is likely to be the first of many such problems as an informal
army of unwashed hackers starts to target the software.
Meanwhile, the company has begun drawing flak on its UK pricing for
the new software.
Gates was challenged yesterday on why the price of Vista is the same
in dollars and in pounds - the basic edition is £99 in the UK versus
$99 in the US. One US dollar is currently worth 51 UK pence.
Gates told the BBC: "Well we try and keep our prices largely in line
country to country, I haven't followed currency rates that may have
made that drift."
Just for the record Bill, a pound has been costing at least $1.90 for
the best part of a year, according to MSN's currency calculator here.®
http://www.theregister.com/2007/01/31/vista_drm_hacked/