Thus far the Windows Phone 7 platform hasn't reportedly been
suffering as severely from piracy as Apple's iOS or Google's Android.
However, Microsoft may be in for a similar fate as its competitors.
In six hours, a developer advising technical blog site WPCentral was
able to create an app (named "FreeMarketPlace") that downloaded any
app from Microsoft's WP7 Marketplace, and removed the protections from it [video]. The cracked app could then be
directly loaded on an unlocked handset, or be saved to your hard drive.
WPCentral was ardent that it
would not publish details of how the hack worked, and that it only made the
video as a cry to action for Microsoft. The site comments, "We are
confident Microsoft will work hard to implement a stronger DRM system, in part
due to this proof-of-concept demonstration."
The site had previously laid out a plan of attack for
cracking Microsoft's DRM scheme, writing that the necessary steps were to:
- Download all the apps from the
Marketplace: done (or can be done)
- Seed those apps in a torrent for
peer to peer distribution
- Circumvent the 10 sideload app
limit: done (see here)
- Enable a disabled app: tricky, but
can be done, no method to do it en masse
- Get around code obfuscation (not mentioned by
V@l€n, we'll do it for him)
- Remove XAP security signature:
needs work
That
report came following the post of a white paper detailing the initial steps on the XDA site (a resource for Microsoft developers) by hacker named V@l€n.
Keep in mind, however, without security protections properly in
place, pirate programs may be unexpectedly modified to contain trojans or other
malware.
Modified apps distributed via third-party apps stores were identified this week
as creating a growing Android phone botnet in China. Thus
when WP7's DRM is eventually cracked in full, beware if you're downloading
pirated apps with your phone.
