Submitted by: kirkland on Monday December 11th, 2006 at 11:05 AM EST

Despite all the talk surrounding its security and beefed up anti-piracy measures we all knew that it wouldn't take long for hackers to take a stab at Vista's activation scheme. Cracked copies of Windows Vista started flooding the internet soon after the operating system was released to manufacturing and ahead of its official release.

Microsoft's new Volume Activation 2.0 system requires that each copy of Vista for volume licensees be activated through Microsoft servers. This wasn't the case with Windows XP numerous pirated "corporate" editions of the operating system flooded the internet.

But for those that think that all of their problems are solved with this software hack, you may want to hold your horses. A valid KMS product key is still required and the activation is only valid for 180 days.

» Full story @ Daily Tech