Windows Phone 7 Marketplace Hack Demonstrated 89
broggyr writes "Seems it didn't take long to hack the Windows Phone 7 marketplace. Quoting WPCentral: 'For developers, the weakness in Microsoft's DRM for Windows Phone 7 applications has been well known for quite some time, and there have been calls for Microsoft to address these concerns ... Since then, a "white hat" developer has provided WPCentral with a proof-of-concept program that can successfully pull any application from the Marketplace, remove the security and deploy to an unlocked Windows Phone with literally a push of a button. Alternatively, you could just save the cracked XAP file to your hard drive. Neither the app nor the methodology is public, and it will NOT be released ... It is important to note that this was all done within six hours by one developer.'"
Re:A question of cash... (Score:4, Insightful)
To go by the PC experience, there are basically two motives behind cracking DRM on programs: You have the warez scene guys, who do it for the interest and the bragging rights, and tend to produce working(but in no way intended to look uncracked, particularly in areas like the installer, which will often be coated in the livery and distinctive symbols of the group that cracked it) releases that quickly get torrented around and make nobody any money worth noting. Second, you have the more professional set who(sometimes independently, sometimes piggibacking on the efforts of the first group) produce functioning cracked versions, intended to look as legitimate as possible(no flaming skull ascii art in the documentation...), mostly of expensive professional programs, for sale to the unsuspecting or unsophisticated as suspiciously cheap, but hardly free, "OEM" software.
Unless Windows Phone substantially differs from the iPhone or Android, and actually features a lot of available expensive pro stuff, the second group will be largely unmotivated(also, since MS controls the official market, it will be very difficult to fool n00bs into thinking that your cracked copy is a "real" version, even if sideloading is trivial). The first group might spring up, if the Windows Phone market becomes large enough to provide a pool of interested hackers; but(perversely) the sheer ease of cracking, at the present time, will likely bore them. Somebody will probably release a sideloader utility, at some point; but an active warez scene like that of the PC seems less likely, and an active "fake legitimate" scene seems less likely still.