Please help me with this one.

[achilleasgr]

Hi.
I remember years ago reading in a technology magazine how some Microsoft developers actually used cracked software to create a file inside XP, but that cracked program leaving traces in the file, and so it became widely known, at least for some time that Microsoft used illegal software.

I cannot find an article however on the web that supports that statement, since searching something on a search engine that includes both "crack" and "xp" will result in hundreds of thousands of irrelevant pages.

I need it to write an article in my website, so as to not have that fact lost in history; and not to back up any illegal activities of my own website, to which I will not be engaging.

[Smith6612]

Hmm, I recall hearing something about this a year ago. I'll see if I can dig up some info for you

[Livewire]

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-111...sageID=1765547

http://www.techpavan.com/2009/05/24/...dows-xp-audio/


For the search, "Microsoft uses cracked software xp" and those were in the top 5

Surprisingly, no actual cracked xp's are showing up on the first page, but I didn't go further. The first site I linked I recognize as trustworthy, dunno how much faith I put in the second, but there you go

[gmabetty]

Interesting...

[ah-blabla]

There's also a former backdoor which MS allegedly deliberately left in XP and newer using Windows Meta files (now patched since some cracker discovered it...). Read here.

[adamparkzer]

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-111...sageID=1765547

http://www.techpavan.com/2009/05/24/...dows-xp-audio/

Those articles are pretty interesting. I never realized Microsoft would ever do such a thing.

[Mr. DOS]

I never realized Microsoft would ever do such a thing.

And I seriously doubt Microsoft has yet done such a thing, or at least, hasn't had it uncovered yet. Far more likely is that they outsourced for the audio files and whatever company produced them was running the pirated software without Microsoft's knowledge.

--- Mr. DOS

[achilleasgr]

And I seriously doubt Microsoft has yet done such a thing, or at least, hasn't had it uncovered yet. Far more likely is that they outsourced for the audio files and whatever company produced them was running the pirated software without Microsoft's knowledge.

--- Mr. DOS

"Microsoft" is a company; a fictional entity.
It's employees have already done so.
Now what remains for all who work in Microsoft to cover it up for their benefit, and produce people who are blindly faithful in their products, like you.

[stpvoice]

"Microsoft" is a company; a fictional entity.
It's employees have already done so.
Now what remains for all who work in Microsoft to cover it up for their benefit, and produce people who are blindly faithful in their products, like you.

That is true. Even now, at the moment I have the word "conspiracy" ringing around my head, and I do find myself in a position where I do have faith in their products, but it brings me to say that every major business has had some sort of cover up-it's just Microsoft was more widely criticised, because a lot of people use their products.

[Mr. DOS]

...and produce people who are blindly faithful in their products, like you.

I am not blindly faithful in Microsoft's products, nor, I hope, anyone else's. Whatever gave you that idea? I just think it more likely that an externally-produced sound file would manage to slip something like this through as opposed to one created in-house. Although, in reality, who opens up random binary files to check for this sort of thing, no matter where they originated from? :P

--- Mr. DOS