Product activation is exploitable

["Geoincidents" <geoincidents () getinfo org>]

So I'm reading this story http://www.nccomp.com/sysadmin/dell.html about a
company who laid off their admin and he took all their product keys and
posted them on the internet. Well to make a long story short, somehow
applying a hotfix caused the software to deactivate (it has to have a
deactivation feature or what good is it?) and require activation again which
of course was impossible since MS shut those numbers down.

It got to thinking, what if the dcom worm had grabbed the product key from

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion]
"ProductKey"="XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX" or
ProductID="XXXXX-OEM-XXXXXXX-XXXXX"

and posted it to a dozen random newsgroups? According to the EULA Microsoft
has the right to shut down every one who becomes infected and compromised in
this manner.

Sure looks like a security issue to me, product activation makes this
registry entry which allows all users full read access a dangerous thing to
have laying around unprotected.

Geo.

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