Time of death: 4:22 PM UTC September 26th

Notes, please read:

For those of you who don’t know, HWID was the holy grail for Windows activation, letting you generate licenses straight from Microsoft licensing servers, being registered as fully legitimate in microsofts servers and letting you keep the activation permanently, even after windows reinstalls being completely undetectable and with nothing on your system being modified. If you’re still using outdated activation methods and you missed out on this, I’m sorry

Existing HWID licenses are left unaffected. Only new requests are blocked, no licenses were revoked.

By the way, MAS still works and is the best option for Windows/Office activation. For permanent Office activation use it’s Ohook method (supports subscription products such as 365 as well) and KMS38 for Windows

ALL OTHER ACTIVATION METHODS ARE STILL WORKING, ONLY METHOD AFFECTED IS HWID.

All HWID activators are affected, not only MAS

Around that time, Microsoft servers unexpectedly started blocking the licensing requests HWID activation method sends to Microsoft. This was a slow rollout that spanned over a few hours, at the moment the exploit is completely dead. The best options for Windows activation now is KMS38 or vlmcsd.

Patching this would boost illegal key reselling websites which causes more harm to Microsoft than HWID exploit. We can only wonder why they patched this.

{“code”:“BadRequest”,“data”:[],“details”:[],“innererror”:{“code”:“PermanentTSLRejection”,“data”:[],“details”:[{“code”:“113”,“message”:“avsErrorCode”,“target”:null}],“message”:“The Purchase Service rejected the provided TSL; the client should destroy the TSL.”,“source”:“PurchaseFD”},“message”:“The calling client sent a bad request to the service.”,“source”:“PurchaseFD”}

TLS=Temporary Signed License=The tickets HWID activation sends. Microsoft servers are now just responding with “kill it.”

Transferring existing HWID licenses to other computers using Microsoft account is broken too.

    • astraeus@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      This is why I’m very happy with Valve’s efforts to port Windows functionality to Linux/GNU kernel. The clock is ticking for my main desktop to become a Linux desktop, my only holdouts are games and some of my music production plugins. I could probably abandon some if I had to honestly.

      • OverfedRaccoon 🦝@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        People have been saying “the year of the Linux desktop” for 20 years now. I definitely think it’s closer than ever now that gaming (aside from some anticheat stuff) is mostly there thanks to Valve putting in the work, for sure. Once Win 10 hits EOL, this being the last Windows holdout I have, it’ll get Linux like the rest of them.

        • ugo@feddit.it
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          1 year ago

          I don’t know, I’ve been using Linux for the better part of 15 years now, on my desktop, so for me it’s been the year of the Linux desktop for a while.

          Sure, there are some issues here and there, but far, far fewer than in windows. Even 10 years ago.

        • HRYDJPCHNMNDGBLTFIYA@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          It’s definitely the year for me! I’m able to pirate Windows and Linux games alike. Just need to buy an AMD GPU to lock in my choice.

      • Melody Fwygon@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        More major software developers should be doing this and porting everything to Linux as fast as they can. Microsoft is getting greedy these days; and pretty soon we will find ourselves in a world where too many users can’t and won’t afford Windows anymore.

        • astraeus@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          It’s like people are beginning to realize they shouldn’t have to pay for an operating system just so they can use their hardware

    • r00ty@kbin.life
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      1 year ago

      Tell you a weird thing. I activated with a £5 Windows 7 ultimate OEM key on my old system. I upgraded from Intel 9th gen to AMD ryzen 7 (AM5), new mobo, ram, CPU.

      Still enabled and active. I fully expected to need to activate again.

      • SeducingCamel@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I’m still running the same windows 7 license that I put on the PC I built almost 10 years ago, I’ve changed mobos at least 3 times as well as every other component