Steinbring Inc.

Like the look of the iPhone?  Don’t wanna get rid of your windows smartphone?  Now, you can keep your windows phone while pretending to have an iPhone.

Instructions Link [ Via UNEASYSilence ]

There’s a large scale spam run underway, sending short e-mail messages. No text, just the subject field of “Happy New Year!” and a file named postcard.exe as an attachment.

The attachments are variable, but so far we detect them all as Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Tibs.jy. We have a description online too.

In general, kill all files named “postcard.exe”. They always seem to be bad news.

Link

Well, Windows Vista Activation has been cracked again.  This time, instead of using a vmware image with the validation server on it to revalidate when Vista wants it, there’s a crack to make Vista never want to revalidate.

• The TimerStop vista test crack works on all 32-bit x86 Windows Vista edition such as Vista Ultimate and Vista Home Premium. Success rate in 64-bit (x64) environment is likely to be low.
• The crack will make the time left to activate Vista to become always 43200 minutes (30 days), and will not countdown or reduce.
• It’s possible to access Windows Update if you install Windows Vista with default product key (no product key entered when installation).
• During the first 3 days of activation grace period after installing Windows Vista, Microsoft has designed it in such a way that Vista will allow greatest flexibility for users to install required drivers and application during this period, so Vista won’t prompt any reminder message for activation. After crack, Vista OS will always run with 30 days left for activation, thus there will not be any watermark or reminder to activate.
• It’s possible to pass Windows Vista Genuine Advantage (WVGA) validation, so users able to download Microsoft value-added software for genuine customers.
• As mentioned above, as Vista will also remain in first 3 days of activation grace period, in theory, Microsoft will not be able to differentiate who is the newly installed system, or who is the ‘patched’ system, unless of course, they check for the specific file or system (privacy anyone?).
• Users can only view that there is 30 more days for system to be activated in the system properties, but it won’t affect system usage or installation method.

Link, Download [ Via DailyTech ]

Well, I guess it will. Someone’s gotta patch vulnerabilities and clean infected systems.

A Microsoft-commissioned study estimates that Windows Vista could create 100,000 new IT-related jobs in the United States.
The study, which was performed by IDC, also estimates that for every dollar of Vista-related revenue that Microsoft takes in next year, $18 will be generated for the technology industry as a whole.

Link, Another Link, The Study’s Findings

Microsoft’s new activation policies call for every single copy of the new operating system to be activated. This includes copies purchased as part of the company’s corporate volume licensing program, and Microsoft tried to make the process less daunting for IT administrators.

The company created something called the “Key Management Service,” which would allow the administrator to activate all the computers in a single swoop. From there, a central computer would maintain all activations for the network.

To prevent piracy, however, the activation is good only for a period of 180 days. After that, the computer would need to reconnect with the KMS to receive another key. This was done to discourage people from attempting to use the KMS to activate their own computers at home.

But it was only a matter of time before hackers figured out how to reproduce a local KMS using a VMware image and a VBS script. From there, as long as the edition of Vista is either Business or Enterprise, the keys generated would successfully activate the operating system.