full-disclosure - Product activation is exploitable

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Message-ID: <20030907045914.WLHS13237.lakemtao05.cox.net@winxppro>
From: rkingsla at cox.net (Rick Kingslan)
Subject: Product activation is exploitable

Interesting.  But, I'm not sure how effective this would be, as everything
that I've looked at (XP, 2003) doesn't have the actual WPA keys in the
registry - unless I'm looking in the wrong place (possible).  And, unless
it's WPA, MS is going to have a tough time shutting anyone else off who is
'suspected' of using a published key. 

However, there's always shutting off the POWER in your city - that's
effective, too.

-rtk

-----Original Message-----
From: full-disclosure-admin@...ts.netsys.com
[mailto:full-disclosure-admin@...ts.netsys.com] On Behalf Of Geoincidents
Sent: Saturday, September 06, 2003 6:04 PM
To: full-disclosure@...ts.netsys.com
Subject: [Full-Disclosure] Product activation is exploitable

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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