According to ArsTechnica , the activation algorithm of Windows XP was finally cracked. This allowed for offline activation. The Reddit discussion was covered in a tinyapps post, but it appears that the program which allows it has been around for several months.
The subreddit user retroreviewyt is the first to share the software and doesn’t know where it came from. They speculate that it may have come from a torrent.
Someone is working on reverse-engineering the software in the meantime. A user named Neo-Desktop uploaded the program to Github, and stated in a discussion that they were working on creating an open-source version.
Microsoft stopped official support for Windows XP in just over nine years. But the OS has refused to die. As recently as 2021 the Windows XP remained as the most popular operating systems in Armenia. In 2019, Forbes reported a SpiceWorks report that revealed One in three US businesses still have at least one Windows XP computer on their network.
This has forced the company into releasing security updates whenever something as bad as WannaCry happens. Do you remember WannaCry? Windows XP received a patch in 2017. Another exploit was triggered by a similar in 2019.
