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Keyhole – Forge own Windows Store licenses
- antimemetics 2y agoFor my personal use I found it trivial to activate my Win10 Professional. I just had to change the server address for the license check and boom fully activated. Not gonna share the specifics here but you can find it easily. I guess the method described here does „more“ since it’s much more elaborate. Not super familiar with the different levels of win licences
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- notpushkin 2y agoOne of Massgrave’s most famous “products” is a script that performs such server activation, so if anybody wants to find it look no further than the OP article. (Although it's not too hard to perform such activation manually either!)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- heraldgeezer 2y agoMassgrave has their script for HWID and KMS and Office activations :)
- haunter 2y ago>Not gonna share the specifics here but you can find it easily. Did you open the link?
- qilo 2y agoMassgrave's tools activate your licence with Microsoft's servers.
- AshamedCaptain 2y agoAfter reading the article, and specially the remarks about this engine being copy-pasted from the Xbox DRM engine , does anyone still believe that Pluton, also copy-pasted from the Xbox, is about end user security? And not totally about MS finally having enforceable DRM on PCs? Oh and by the way Pluton is now on the latest batch of Intel laptop chips. And has been on AMDs for a while. How soon until Windows requires it?
- dgellow 2y agoI may be naive, but I still do. Skepticism is warranted, yet outright dismissal based on conjecture is its own brand of fallacious reasoning. Can Microsoft potentially benefit? Certainly. But that doesn't negate the possibility of genuine user security motivations and benefits for end users
- exe34 2y ago> Can Microsoft potentially benefit? Certainly. But that doesn't negate the possibility of genuine user security motivations and benefits for end users it's important to ask which one of the motivations will allow them to lock users down and ask for ongoing rent. one of these two will, and that's what will always drive the decision.
- heraldgeezer 2y ago>does anyone still believe that Pluton, also copy-pasted from the Xbox, is about end user security? I never did. The worst part is explaining it to people drinking the MS coolaid. I'm an MS admin so people at work love Win11, Intune etc all that max lockdown shit. To me that's not what Windows is about, for me Windows is excellent because of the admin tools and backwards compatibility. But hey that's just me. Proton will be another TPM thing, introduce it, wait 5 years, then mandate it. They have time.
- criddell 2y agoAnother TPM thing? What problem do you have with the TPM?
- libertine 2y agoThis sort of thing over decades has been the best distribution and communication channel for Windows.
- 23B1 2y agoDoes not apply to most other software.
- libertine 2y agoYes, but I think it works exceptionally for other software, like games! One example that stands out was the hacking/modding scene of the GTA Vice City with Multi Theft Auto, and even GTA SA, which gained a massive player base that would have never experienced the game and created emotional bonds with it. I can't prove this of course, but I bet a huge portion of the GTA V success was from users who played a moded version of the game in the past "for free". Another example is the Adobe Suite, like Photoshop, and Illustrator, which allowed many people to become proficient with the Adobe tools and be part of a qualified workforce using that same suite of tools. A lot of these professionals from low-income countries would never had access to these tools otherwise in their formative years. Price is a barrier to entry for many users who wouldn't have paid for the software.
- thrownawaysz 2y agoMAS (which is also hosted on Github) is the perfect example of Microsoft not caring about end user piracy. Just use it.
- nicman23 2y agomore like the license process is so bad that they dont bother to go after them
- sneak 2y agoThere is ultimately no way to get a good license process on consumer PCs. The owner and operator of the hardware is also the adversary. It’s like DRM for video and other content: you are giving the ciphertext and the keys to the attacker. It’s only a matter of time until it is broken.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago>the license process is so bad that they dont bother to go after them For a person, yes go for it they won’t bother. For a company… we have had some annoying MS audits. So how everything has to be retail WITH the cards. I have a stack ready for our next audit if it ever happens again.
- nicman23 2y agosorry with cards? what do you mean?
- diggan 2y agoMaybe it's beneficial for Microsoft that solutions like that are FOSS so they can more easily inspect the code for prevention purposes in the future?
- fallingsquirrel 2y agoI think Microsoft is just purposefully lax about enforcing their own trademarks on their own properties. It could be due to organizational memory of their antitrust case. It could be to avoid bad publicity (like the recent spat where youtube took down a video teaching people how to use adblockers). Another example of this: the leaked Windows source code is available straight from GitHub.
- Tepix 2y agoSo, just stating the obvious, you can now (¥) download all xbox games directly from the microsoft store for free? I.e. the xbox is - for now - as completely hacked as the PS Vita? (¥) you might have to figure out some details
- ryx 2y agoYep. This seems to be the most overlooked part of the article, although maybe the most interesting. Unfortunately not for anyone who has activated the auto-update feature on his/her Xbox, as the latest system software version seems to include a higher kernel version than supported by the collateral-damage exploit.
- 38 2y agoExactly why you should never, ever, enable auto update, for anything. Too often it ends up breaking something or patching something you don't want patched. It allows a profit seeking company to enable or disable software functionality on your device, regardless if it's in your interest.
- indrora 2y agoIt should be noted that unless you've modified an Xbox One, from what I understand you cannot stop it from auto updating unless you permanently disconnect it from the internet (which will cause your licenses to eventually expire, in the year timespan or so), new launch games won't run (they're tied to a minimum version of the OS).
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoWow, so it's a ticking time bomb, that should be illegal.
- seabass-labrax 2y agoI agree that the device updating without your consent should be illegal, but new games requiring the updates seems fair enough: the Xbox can still run all of the games it was advertised to be able to do so at launch, and if game developers could not rely on the presence of system updates, Microsoft would just release an entirely new, incompatible Xbox instead. I think that updates are fine so long as you can update and roll back whenever you want to.
- a1o 2y agoDoes anyone knows a good way to activate MS Office on macOS ? Doesn't matter how many times I buy the thing it eventually forgets the license and calling Microsoft Support usually doesn't result in anything. One day Office starts complaining that it's not activated and then it eventually locks me out of it. It would be nice if the Office license on macOS actually worked but if there's an easy solution for activation I wouldn't look back.
- thrownawaysz 2y agohttps://massgrave.dev/office_for_mac https://massgrave.dev/office_for_mac
- a1o 2y agoThank you!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ravetcofx 2y agoAlternative answer, Use LibreOffice
- a1o 2y agoI use it too, but I need MS Office itself because of weird Azure plugin that makes documents in OneDrive that only open in MS Office.
- solidninja 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bloqs 2y agoSo this is now patched? And this works on xbox store too?
- efilife 2y agoIt is said in the article that it's patched, multiple times
- layer8 2y agoIf I read this correctly, Microsoft will be able to reduce the applicability of the temporary-license signing key, meaning that you probably won’t be able to generate permanent licenses for long.
- loeg 2y ago> As it turns out, data after the signature block isnt checked at all... and it can even override data that came before it. Whenever two blocks of the same type are stored together, the last one overrides all the others before it. So, if we want to change any license data, we can just make a block for it and put it after the signature block! Amazing.
- Dwedit 2y agoI wonder if this is the worst cryptography blunder since Nintendo Wii using 'strncmp' to validate a hash (which stops after the first matching 00 byte)
- bri3d 2y agoThis "check the block signature and then read another one" bug is incredibly common. I'd say it's one of the top 5 bugs I see in Validating Things. Other examples of places I've seen this recently include some variants of VW AG infotainment systems (mostly MIB2 High, I think), but it's kind of everywhere (as was the `strncmp-a-hash` method of validating an RSA-PKCS#1.5 signature). This is probably the most egregious/impactful manifestation of it, though, especially if it applies to Xbox.
- mdaniel 2y ago> This "check the block signature and then read another one" bug is incredibly common I don't have links handy, but Android fell prey to this bug twice checking .apk signatures due to .zip files having duplicated copies of the manifest
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- throwaway48476 2y agoCan this be used to enable the HEVC extension without a M$ account? It's so frustrating they can't license the patents as a lump sum.
- e4m2 2y agoYou don't need this exploit. You could use a media player that doesn't need MS codec packs, but assuming this is not an option: 1. Go to https://store.rg-adguard.net https://store.rg-adguard.net. 2. Paste in https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n4wgh0z6vhq https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n4wgh0z6vhq. 3. Change ring to "Retail". 4. Download the file with an "appxbundle" extension. 5. Install it (might need to enable developer mode for this step; don't remember).
- Stagnant 2y agoThe links to download the official microsoft signed HEVC installers can actually also be found at massgrave.dev[0] It truly is an awesome resource. 0: https://massgrave.dev/unsupported_products_activation#hevc-video-extensions https://massgrave.dev/unsupported_products_activation#hevc-v...
- throwaway48476 2y agoAwesome
- Rinzler89 2y agoWhy would you need it? HEVC codec ships with the driver package from your GPU vendor.
- RockRobotRock 2y agoWhy didn’t that work for me? I have an nvidia gpu
- esperent 2y agoThis hasn't been my experience. Nvidia + Intel GPU drivers are installed but I still can't play HEVC with the default windows media player. MPC Black works fine though, and probably VLC too.
- Jerrrrrrry 2y agoironically, I will be using un-ironically to play Guitar Hero games that I have the physically discs to, on retail hardware, that has the games installed, but not "licensed" to play without physical tethering of the disc in the failed DVD drive. The double irony is that, even if it works, I may not be able to read my own game-saves since the Console's own public key is on the revocation list. I could sidestep this by resigning the CON files with the default value, 0. The triple irony may be forthcoming yet. this all looks very familiar indeed. fuckin brilliant
- Jerrrrrrry 2y agoecosystem of xml > tlv > null-terminated strings / utf16 for user input make an off by one error anywhere or unverified* malicious user input in the house of cards of technical debt in any MS ecosystem collapse into minefield of privilege escalation, RCE, etc horizontal pivots...not trivial, however. this bug is essentially a retro-active pivoting platform for the lucky day you combine unsanitized input and context escape. seems like just trivial digital sticker-swapping, but MS over-leveraging its successes, refusal to break things (to maintain backwards compatibility, and it's own technical debt..), mean that some mistakes, however trivial, yet affecting, are immortalized
- thund 2y agoIn case your antivirus is censoring the page: https://archive.is/90XGW https://archive.is/90XGW
- stepupmakeup 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nicolas_t 2y agoNow I just wish this could give me a license to install the Lego Boost for Windows 10 app that used to be on the windows store until 2020... From my understanding, if you have the license, then you can still download it but it's not available for new users.
- layer8 2y agoMaybe you could use this instead: https://en.scratch-wiki.info/wiki/LEGO_BOOST_Extension https://en.scratch-wiki.info/wiki/LEGO_BOOST_Extension
- nicolas_t 2y agoI tried that and it'll be great when my kid is older but the Lego Boost app has some kind of gamification built in that's honestly pretty sweet and is a good gateway I think. Right now, I'm using an android emulator to be able to run the app on a laptop (we don't have tablets) but it's a janky experience compared to a native windows app.
- throwaway9858 2y agotry https://store.rg-adguard.net/ https://store.rg-adguard.net/ to download the app, and then either keyhole to license it or just unpacking it and installing it in developer mode.
- nicolas_t 2y agoThanks a lot, I didn't know this worked.
- vednig 2y ago> which we independently uncovered around the same time it was reported to Microsoft highly suspicious
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nixosbestos 2y agoClip has been around longer than the Xbox One though?
- HL33tibCe7 2y ago> massgrave.dev Bit gross to be honest