Cracking Windows

How hard would it be to crack Micorsoft Windows Operating Systems? Curious to see how difficult it might be . Need some knowledge of nesscary tools one might need to do it. And an idea of the difficulty. My friends and I are usually doing the opposite and writing programs so this seems interesting. We were thinking of it the other night and it got our minds pondering the thought if it was even possible.We also got to thinking that they have some of the most brilliant minds working for them and designing software that the encryption would be unbeliveable.

I was asking about this a while back.. To no conclusion either.. Although.. I did recieve about 20 replies worth of babbling why ME sucks and 2k is better..

=|:

I'm sure I read a report somewhere that hackers in China have already cracked the activation code part of WindowsXP. Don't know if it is true, but it wouldn't surprise me, as there is an awful lot of software piracy in that part of the world.

Yeah the activation code got cracked, I can confirm on that. Free copy's of XP pro were passed around out here.

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Originally posted by darkes
I'm sure I read a report somewhere that hackers in China have already cracked the activation code part of WindowsXP. Don't know if it is true, but it wouldn't surprise me, as there is an awful lot of software piracy in that part of the world.

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Tell me about it. In Hong Kong, there was this place in Tsimshatsui (near the MTR station) on the Kowloon side of the harbor called (rough translation:) "The Golden Shopping Arcade"... Practically every program you could ever want in a nice tiny shrink-wrapped package with a CD-key at $10-$20 HK (less than $5 US)... The police knew about it, everyone knew about it... but like with drugs, the police were really after the Big Fish, not the little distributor.

My guess is that a lot depends on a system admin himself. If he keeps up with the latest patches, the machine is properly locked down and he has good IDS it would probably be hard. But i assume there is always a way around it. We are talking win2k here. But win98 and 95 should be quite easy to get by. But then again it depends on a person.
I heard the same that XP activation has been cracked and i have seen a crack for XP office.

I would think that it's very hard but not even close impossible. However, the server checks are annoying, kind oif like cuteftp - just a registry entry with user/serial stops the server reg check.

And, it's microsoft. Have they ever made anything that someone can't crack? nnnnnooooppee

Windows 98 and 95 are actually kinda hard to "hack"...mainly because they don't have and real "network capabilities". If you wanna get into the meat of things, stick with NT, 2k, or even XP. Over and out...

referring back to:
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Tell me about it. In Hong Kong, there was this place in Tsimshatsui (near the MTR station) on the Kowloon side of the harbor called (rough translation "The Golden Shopping Arcade"... Practically every program you could ever want in a nice tiny shrink-wrapped package with a CD-key at $10-$20 HK (less than $5 US)... The police knew about it, everyone knew about it... but like with drugs, the police were really after the Big Fish, not the little distributor
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from Terr

Looks like nothing has changed in Hong Kong over the last few years then. When I was out there about 5 years ago (when it was still controlled by the UK), the situation was exactly the same.
And of course you could buy very convincing fakes of trainers, designer clothing, Rolex watches etc. for a few dollars.

Ok to clear some things up that are in this thread, I'm not interested in hacking or breaking into windows computers. I was looking for help to crack the windows os source code, maybe you did mean this, but just for others to know. Maybe they already post it, but for some reason that doens't sound like Microsoft. I know if I ever got a hold of it, I would put it up on the net and make it free source.

I would really like to go to Hong Kong one day, that's good information on to know where to get pirated software dirt cheap. I hope to go someday when I'm stinking rich.lol.


Hope it clears things up, I wasn't pissed off, but just want to see if I can get some better answers.