Windows Product Activation compromised

Summary

Windows XP enlists ten hardware components to calculate the installation ID, but six of them can be canceled without any problems:

Component	To be canceled by
Important: A LAN does not tolerate two computers with the same MAC address.
Volume ID	Adapted by means of tool
MAC address	Tuned by means of driver
Graphics card	Switch over to docking station
CPU serial number	Switch off in BIOS
SCSI host adapter	Switch over to docking station
IDE controller	Switch over to docking station

Only four components are working almost effectively:

Component	Size of bit field
Hard disk	7
CPU type	3
CD ROM	7
RAM size	3

Two fields are coded with three bits and two with seven bits. Because in each field the coefficient 0 is impossible, 7*7*127*127=790321 possibilities remain for the file wpa.dbl. As only three components are allowed to change from the moment of Activation onwards, you can take the weakest fixed component for a "Universal Activation".

The CPU type or the RAM size present themselves here as the best solution. It is more than sufficient to only once activate a computer with 128 MBytes of RAM at Microsoft's. With its file wpa.dbl you can then "activate" all other computers of the same memory size.