14 DAY TRIAL // That didn't take too long! Redmond-based software giant Microsoft announced only yesterday that it updated the Windows Marketplace for Mobile with a series of new features, among which it counted the presence of a fresh, improved anti-piracy protection, and now we learn that the measures have already been cracked. The one thing that is certain here is that things do not look very encouraging for those who want to make sure that their investments and intellectual property (IP) are well protected.
The updated anti-piracy protection differed from the standard level in the fact that developers were required to include in their application a code received from the Windows Marketplace developer portal. In addition, when purchasing an application, the user receives “a license key that is uniquely tied to the application and the device,” which is then recorded in a local license store and verified when the app is running. This protection form adds to the standard one, which consists of deleting the .cab file (sent from the software portal to the handset) after the app has been installed.
Here is what Chainfire stated on XDA-Developers, “I have now cracked the 'advanced' copy protection used by Marketplace. As you may know, this is a 'better' protection than the original 'CAB copy protection' Marketplace offered. […] This new 'advanced' protection was released today by Microsoft, and as far as I know no app available already uses it at the time of this writing. […] So I got the code snippets you are supposed to put in your app […]. While it was not exactly easy to beat, it took me less than two hours to devise a 'generic' hack, without modifying any files on the device. (Well hey, at least it’s better than the 5 minutes it took for the 'basic' protection, right?)”
While the said “generic hack” won’t be released into the wild, it seems rather annoying that the new level of protection went down as fast as it did. Unfortunately, it seems that Microsoft is not allowing developers to come up with their own protection solution, and asks them to use its own copy protection, which turns out to be defective. As WMPoweruser notes, Chainfire wants to prove that Microsoft is approaching the issue in the wrong way, and that it should enable developers make their own move in the area.