The Redmond Company is taking action against the Windows Vista piracy phenomenon. In this context, Microsoft has announced the release of an update designed to counteract a fully functional workaround to activating Windows Vista. A member of the Windows Genuine Advantage team admitted that the Redmond Company has been analyzing a number of different workaround attempts to activate Windows Vista. Out of them, the WGA team narrowed the number of functional workarounds to only two.

"One of these workarounds we have affectionately named "frankenbuild" because it involves cobbling together files from an RC build and with an RTM build to create a hybrid that bypasses activation. The other workaround involves the use of some virtualization technology and our practices for activating larger business customers," stated the WGA team representative.

The update released by Microsoft will only affect the pirated copies of Windows Vista that have been activated via the "frankenbuild" method. As of yet, activating business versions of the operating system through spoofed KMS servers will still be functional.

"Piracy is evolving and has made the expected jump from Windows XP to Windows Vista," commented David Lazar, director of Genuine Windows. "We are already starting to see some workarounds to the Vista licensing requirements. The update that we are releasing today does not specifically address that, but we are working on an update that will specifically address the KMS workaround."

"For me, it's an interesting moment. We've been investing a lot of resources into continuously evolving our approach to piracy. One of the key "pillars" we focus on is what we call the Engineering pillar - this is essentially the body of work that shows up in the products themselves (as opposed to policy or education efforts). With the release of Windows Vista we're putting into place a number of new anti-piracy innovations. And with these first work arounds we're getting to see those innovations in action," added the WGA representative.

Via the Windows Update client, the "frankenbuild" activated copies of Windows Vista will be forced into a validation check. Microsoft informed that it has already blocked the release candidate keys for unauthorized systems and that consequently the frankenbuild Vista copies will fail validation and lose certain capabilities and functionality. Following a 30 days period, the operating system will be moved into reduced functionality mode.

"If they don't produce a new product key within 30 days, they will then only be able to access their system in what we call reduced functionality mode - a mode which limits their use to one hour with their default web browser. I want to be clear here that even though they can only use their browser for an hour, we will never limit their access to their data. A user can always -boot their PC into what is called Safe Mode. Safe Mode is a mode of using Windows that has limited driver, display and networking support - but allows a user access to all their files," concluded the WGA representative.