Office 2010 Harder to Pirate, Just like Windows 7

Microsoft has taken necessary measures designed to curb the piracy of upcoming releases of its two main cash cows, the next iteration of the Windows client and of the Office System. In this sense, both Windows 7 and Office 2010 feature the same anti-piracy enhancements as part of the evolution of the Redmond company’s efforts to make its products increasingly harder to bootleg. Microsoft indicated that it would be integrating new anti-piracy innovations into Office 2010, which is expected to hit the shelves in the first half of the coming year. Microsoft has yet to confirm a specific delivery deadline for the availability of Office 2010, beyond 1H 2010.

On August 25th, 2009, Microsoft announced that it was making Office Genuine Advantage, a mechanism designed to verify and confirm that Office installations are genuine, available to consumers on no less than 41 markets worldwide. At the same time, the software giant made available for download anupdated version of Office Genuine Advantage Notification to customers running Office 2007, Office 2003 and Office XP. Cori Hartje, senior director of Microsoft’s Genuine Software Initiative, revealed that with the launch of Office 2007’s successor Microsoft would also tailor OGA to Office 2010.

“While future consumer installations will closely resemble what we have today, additional advantages that customers can expect include the ability to issue product keys that upgrade the installed version to one that is incrementally feature-rich,” Hartje revealed. “The ultimate goal of our programs that stem the flood of piracy is not only to lessen the impact of these illegal activities, but also to ensure that our customers enjoy all the capabilities — as well as the peace of mind — that come with using genuine software.”

Among the new anti-piracy measures that will find their way into Office 2010, Microsoft underlined counterfeit detection capabilities as well as tamper-resistant features. In this manner, Office 2010 will be harder to pirate, the software giant explained. According to Microsoft, the evolution of Office 2010 anti-piracy measures is related to that of Windows 7, and it involves the integration of the Software Protection Platform.

“The introduction of SPP into Office 2010 will also make it harder for counterfeiters to defraud consumers by selling inferior, bogus copies of Office, as the product will have technical features that make the program harder to pirate,” stated Keith Beeman, general manager, Genuine Software Initiative. “The end-to-end approach taken by the Office team exemplifies Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to protecting customers from pirated and counterfeit software. “

Of course that, despite of the new anti-piracy measures introduced in Windows 7, hackers took almost no time to produce the first working crack designed to circumvent the operating system’s activation mechanism by using a leaked OEM product key.