Well, it seems like Windows Genuine Advantage (aka, WGA) has become a disadvantage for every single XP and Vista user out there. Every computer that runs a “modern” version of Windows runs a little program that calls home and asks the WGA server(s) if the currently installed OS is “genuine” or not. If it is, all goes well and the OS works as….well…works, at least more often.
But if the WGA server(s) say that the OS is an illegal copy, some of the functionality gets disabled, such as Aero (the “pretty” interface for Vista) and DirectX, the 3d acceleration system that MS developed. This “reduced functionality mode” is then enjoyed by the user until such time as the WGA program determines that the OS is legal. Of course, every illegal copy of Windows XP and Vista out there is still functioning as if it were legal and the WGA service were actually functioning, which means…Pirates 1 - MS 0
All of this means that *every* legal copy of XP and Vista out there has become useless for gamers this weekend (most modern games don’t work without DirectX), and probably for some specialized non-game-related things, like 3d rendering.
And, of course, MS has put all they have available to make it work again….by Tuesday, August 28. Yup, the WGA service is offline until Tuesday.
I understand Microsoft’s desire to keep “piracy” under control, since they lose a lot of money from it (or so they say…but that’s a subject for other days), and the only people they trust is themselves, so they decided to centralize authentication to servers under their own eye…which we all know is calling for trouble.
Single point of failure is a curse in any IT system, and this is probably the biggest SPF ever implemented with malicious forethought. And, unlike decently designed security systems, its failure mode isn’t in favor of the user, but in favor of the company. In an access control system, if the authentication server dies, all doors go into open mode by default, unless the implementer of the system has changed the parameters for some particular access points. That avoids small problems like leaving people locked in their office for days.
But MS decided that if the OS can’t authenticate with the WGA service, the user should be locked out of some functionality, since it’s always the user’s fault, right? Yes, they do it because the evil pirates would otherwise make it so the OS would never be able to connect to the WGA service and the authentication scheme would become useless, but…that should tell them something about their choice of anti-piracy measures, right? But no, that’s not how MS thinks.
Anyway, enjoy your crippled-by-design OS during the weekend and beginning of next week…and hope and pray that they actually fix it by Tuesday as they said the will, otherwise, no games until who-knows-when.
Meanwhile, I’ll go enjoy my noncrippled OS and do productive stuff during the weekend :)
UPDATE: WGA Servers seem to be back up, tho there’s no word about what the problem was or if it’ll end up happening again. The good thing is that the MS tech support people were being pessimistic in their estimate of when it’d be fixed.
Tags: microsoft, Security, single point of failure, software piracy, windows genuine advantage
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Comments
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I think the problem might have been overstated. I’ve got windows vista running and played all weekend, even online games so I know there was an internet connection. It’s microsoft so there was certainly some directx being used.
Everything has worked all weekend with out a problem. I’ve played City of Heroes since I got to Rhode Island Wednesday and Fable which is a Microsoft game.
I wonder if maybe the hysteria was more fun to post than to research. Not you, but the original poster.
To see how if I could break it I even went to the update site to check for updates (weren’t any) and then played. Stuff just worked.
Maybe next time everything will fall down around my ears, but for now, chicken little’s computer is just clicking along swimmingly. (Just turned it on to check and Aero continues to work as well.)
Not overstated, probably misstated or misunderstood.
The thing with WGA is that it only checks when you install an update or an install of something from MS’s site, like the Vista extras things. If you had tried to run the updates tool and gotten any updates during the time the servers were down, your puter would have been marked as illegal copy and you’d have been in trouble if you rebooted, Aero and DirectX, probably among other things, would have been disabled.
You were lucky that your puter was up-to-date before the servers went down, tho…I know of 3 people who ran updates yesterday on their legal copies of windows and got WGAded.
On the other hand, it seems like the servers are back up today, so…it wasn’t as bad as the MS tech support people thought it was.