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https://yeokhengmeng.com/2016/04/installing-windows-xp-on-a-modern-unsupported-haswell-system-in-2016/ | ||
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https://skipster1337.github.io/posts/windows-software.html | ||
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http://wp.xin.at/ | ||
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http://wp.xin.at/archives/829 | ||
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https://msfn.org/board/topic/176687-seaching-for-intel-210-219-lan-xp-2003-32-64-bit-driver/ | ||
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https://www.licenturion.com/xp/ | ||
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https://www.licenturion.com/20.html |
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>> | ||
>> Frequently asked questions and their answers | ||
>> concerning the Fully Licensed WPA paper | ||
>> | ||
>> Fully Licensed GmbH, July 10, 2001 | ||
>> | ||
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>> 1. Was Microsoft involved in the creation of the paper? | ||
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Microsoft was not involved in the creation of the paper in any | ||
way. However, we made a draft version available to Microsoft to give | ||
them a head-start. We consider it to be good etiquette to inform a | ||
vendor of a pending publication related to one his or her products, so | ||
that the vendor is able to prepare an official response. | ||
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>> 2. Why should we believe you? | ||
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We do not expect you to believe us. That's why we have provided our | ||
complete knowledge about WPA and the XPDec utility. Combine both to | ||
verify our claims. | ||
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>> 3. But Thomas Lopatic, one of your managing directors was born in | ||
Unterschleissheim, Germany, which is the town near Munich in | ||
which Microsoft's European headquarters are located. | ||
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This is a nice coincidence. It is in a way understandable - and at the | ||
same time highly amusing to us :-) - that this has given rise to | ||
rumors about the whole paper being a cleverly planned Microsoft | ||
conspiracy. | ||
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Thomas was actually born in Karlsruhe, Germany. However, he was living | ||
in Unterschleissheim from the 1970s - i.e. long before Microsoft moved | ||
there - until recently, when he moved to Berlin. That's why some | ||
records still list Unterschleissheim as the place where he | ||
lives. Incorrectly interpreting these records led to the rumor that | ||
Thomas was born in Unterschleissheim. | ||
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>> 4. Does Microsoft downplay the paper? | ||
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No, most definitely not. The paper really IS harmless. It does not | ||
provide any information that would help a pirate circumvent WPA. | ||
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>> 5. Why did you release details on Windows Product Activation? | ||
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We felt that there is a need for facts in the debate about Windows | ||
Product Activation. Many people suspected that WPA could be abused to | ||
spy on end-users. Our paper, however, shows that insensitive | ||
information is transmitted during product activation. From this, it | ||
can be seen that the facts that we provide really are a necessary | ||
contribution to the ongoing discussion about WPA. | ||
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We think that license enforcement mechanisms will be an important part | ||
of the future of software distribution via the Internet. Thus, we do | ||
think that public discussion of technology of this kind must be free | ||
from bias and it must be based on facts and openness. | ||
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We hope that the information that we provide positively affects the | ||
current debate. The debate is necessary, but it should be based on | ||
facts and full disclosure of information relevant to the privacy | ||
question. | ||
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>> 6. Do you know how to circumvent Windows Product Activation? | ||
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No. We provide insight into which information is transmitted to | ||
Microsoft during activation. Our paper is important to help people | ||
understand the impact of WPA on their work and their privacy. We do | ||
not believe that our paper helps in any way to circumvent the license | ||
enforcement provided by WPA. | ||
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>> 7. Your paper says that Microsoft will err on the user's side. | ||
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What our paper shows is that a) no sensitive information is | ||
transferred to Microsoft and b) typical hardware upgrades do not | ||
negatively affect an already activated installation of Windows XP. | ||
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But, if you either completely re-install Windows XP or modify your | ||
hardware beyond what is tolerated by product activation, you have to | ||
re-activate Windows XP. | ||
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The important question now is: How often will Microsoft let you | ||
re-activate? Erring on the user's side would mean that they allow you | ||
to re-activate as often as you like, which seems to be what Microsoft | ||
says they will do. | ||
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It is, however, impossible to confirm this policy by means of a | ||
technical analysis. | ||
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>> 8. Why doesn't Microsoft know which hardware I use? | ||
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Let us consider the case of IDE controllers. In the installation ID | ||
transmitted to Microsoft they are represented by a 4-bit value. The 4 | ||
bits are obtained by applying the MD5 message digest algorithm to a | ||
string that uniquely identifies the vendor and model of the IDE | ||
controller, e.g. | ||
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'PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_7111&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_01' | ||
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and picking 4 bits from fixed locations in the resulting 128-bit | ||
message digest. | ||
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With 4 bits, we can represent 16 different values at maximum. However, | ||
there are far more than 16 different models of IDE controllers out | ||
there. So, since there are more models than 4-bit values, the above | ||
hashing procedure must yield the same 4 bits for more than one | ||
model. The more models there are, the more models will map to a given | ||
4-bit value. | ||
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In contrast to what Microsoft says, the privacy that WPA provides is | ||
not based on the assumption that it is impossible to invert the | ||
employed message digest algorithm, i.e. MD5. If we used all 128 bits | ||
of the message digest derived from a hardware component's | ||
identification string, this 128-bit value would most probably uniquely | ||
identify the hardware component. If we used 128 bits, each hardware | ||
component on earth would probably map to a different value. | ||
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What an attacker would then do is build a list of all hardware | ||
components on this planet and calculate the corresponding 128-bit | ||
values, which are probably all different. Then finding the hardware | ||
component that corresponds to a certain 128-bit value is just a table | ||
lookup away. | ||
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Privacy is based on the fact that only a few bits of the resulting | ||
128-bit message digest are considered. Obviously this leads to lots of | ||
collisions, i.e. lots of hardware components mapping to a given | ||
value. If there were 160 different models of IDE controllers, we could | ||
on average expect 160 / 16 = 10 models to map to the same 4-bit value. | ||
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Let us, as another example, consider the MAC address of an ethernet | ||
adapter. The discussion is technically not 100% accurate, but it | ||
illustrates the point. The MAC address is a 48-bit value, which means | ||
that it can theoretically be one of 281,474,976,710,656 different | ||
values. However, its 10-bit representation in the Installation ID is | ||
obtained by picking 10 bits from the MD5 hash over an ASCII string | ||
comprised of the 12 hex digits of the 48-bit value. Picking 10 bits | ||
leads to 1,024 different results at maximum. | ||
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So, on average, we expect | ||
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281,474,976,710,656 / 1,024 = 274,877,906,944 | ||
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MAC addresses to map to the same 10-bit value. Because of this, nobody | ||
will be able to obtain the actual MAC address from the 10-bit value, | ||
since there are 274,877,906,944 candidate MAC addresses from which the | ||
10-bit value could have been derived. | ||
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It is interesting to see that the bit-field that represents the MAC | ||
address is 10 bits in size, while the bit-field representing the IDE | ||
controller only consists of 4 bits. Microsoft probably have assigned a | ||
longer bit-field to a component if they expect more diversity in the | ||
identification string of this component. The number of different IDE | ||
controller models is smaller by orders of magnitude than the number of | ||
different MAC addresses. So, to produce sufficient collisions, they | ||
decided to use a relatively small bit-field for IDE controllers but | ||
could still afford to chose a 10-bit bit-field in the case of MAC | ||
addresses. | ||
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>> 9. What are the implications of re-activating after hardware | ||
changes? | ||
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This is an interesting issue which is not covered in our paper. We | ||
simply did not think of it. Our mistake. It was brought to our | ||
attention by an article by Greg Falcon <[email protected]> on | ||
www.slashdot.org: If you have to re-activate your installation of | ||
Windows XP because of hardware modifications, your new hardware | ||
configuration is embedded in the Installation ID in the form discussed | ||
above. While this does not enable anyone to find out which components | ||
you have, it is trivial to find out which components you have | ||
changed. Just examine which bit-fields have changed their value since | ||
the original activation. |
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