Nokia Engineer Shows How To Pirate Windows 8 Metro Apps, Bypass In-app Purchases

MrSeb writes "The principal engineer for Nokia's WP7 and WP8 devices, Justin Angel, has demonstrated, in rather frank detail, how to pirate Windows 8 Metro apps, how to bypass in-app purchases, and how to remove in-game ads. These hacks aren't exactly easy, but more worryingly they're not exactly hard either. Angel shows that turning a trial version of a Metro app into the full version — i.e. pirating an app — is scarily simple. It's just a matter of downloading an open-source app and changing an XML attribute from 'Trial' to 'Full.' Likewise, a quick change to a XAML file can remove an app's ads. Bypassing in-app purchases is a little trickier, involving some reverse engineering of some DLLs and and decryption of database files, but Angel still makes it look fairly easy. Angel gives himself one million credits in Soulcraft, an RPG game — something that would cost you over a thousand dollars, if you performed a legitimate in-app purchase. Angel also demonstrates a way to bypass in-app purchases in WinJS (Metro/JavaScript) apps, by injecting scripts into IE10 (the rendering engine for WinJS apps). It's easy to blame Microsoft for this, but isn't this really an issue that is intrinsic to all installed applications? The fact is, Windows 8 Metro apps are stored on your hard drive — and this means that you have access to the code and data. Hex editors, save game editors, bypassing Adobe's 30-day trials by replacing DLL files, pirating Windows 8 apps — these are all just different incarnations of the same attack vectors."

I detect spin...

[Press2ToContinue]

Apple and Android platforms also suffer from hacking - their piracy rates are at 60% by some:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/7/3225154/dead-trigger-dev-interview-piracy-android-ios [theverge.com]
This does not make Windows 8 any worse than the competition. In fact, it looks somewhat better from this article because the hacks are lengthier, at least for the present.

Attack vector?

[XanC]

There's no attack here. Somebody's modifying software on his own machine for his own use.

Re:Bruce

[Arker]

As another poster already aptly pointed out, it's more like a lock inside your house to prevent you from accessing some of the rooms without paying an additional 'unlocking fee.' Anyone who tries that kind of scam shouldnt be surprised if the homeowner avails himself of a less expensive method of unlocking.

Re:Nothing new here..

[mpicker0]

On the C-64 version of Ultima IV, you could flip the floppy disc upside down and then move your character until the next portion of the map was loaded. It read data directly off the disc with no validation, because the map squares then had all kinds of random items on them, a good number of which were treasure chests. As soon as you got enough gold, you just flipped the disc back over and played normally.

Who do you think you are kidding?

[westlake]

There's no attack here. Somebody's modifying software on his own machine for his own use

Without paying for it.

Some would call it a hack, others simply theft.

The geek earns his bad press. That is how he loses control over the meaning of words like hack and hacking.

Re:I detect spin...

[History's Coming To]

To be honest, I see this as good news. There's no real security threat for the user (assuming any login process is done server side) and means that the software in question is, at least in theory, configurable by the user. The Linux equivalent of this article is "Linux allows your to customise your software with editable config files" - OK, he's having to do it the hard way, but it's a first step, and at least it shows a certain resilience to loss of network connection in principle. This is probably the most positive article on Win8 I've read so far.

The problem with pirating....

[bmo]

...Win8 apps, is that you still wind up with Windows 8 apps.

I have to speculate on the motivation behind this how-to guide. Microsoft has known for a long time that piracy fuels market share. Bill Gates said publicly so in 1998, and every time Ballmer hops up and down about turning the copyright protection knob to 11, saner minds prevail and he shuts up.

This hasn't been released without behind-the-scenes official blessing and encouragement from Microsoft.

--
BMO

Re:I detect a fired employee

[Bert64]

Well he works for Nokia, so chances are he would have been out of a job soon anyway.

On the other hand, piracy has usually been good for the underlying platform, perhaps MS/Nokia are doing this as a way to encourage piracy and thus attract more users to the platform.

Given how easy the hack was, perhaps this was their intention all along only their platform proved so unpopular that noone ever bothered trying.

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[account_deleted]

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