Why 111-1111111 is a valid Windows 95 key 

I did, my 9k6 line was just slow :(

yes, as a youtube95.com owner i can tell he really did have an account and had uploaded some troubleshooting inatructions.

@@strangedude9008 Your site is down.

He did. It just finished uploading this year

@@jarod1701 It's a joke link relating to the fact RU-vid didn't exist in 1995.

Ah interesting, I didn’t think about that! Should be easy to confirm with two keys from the same ODM, might have to do some digging

Probably... as that database wouldn't fit in Bill Gates' computer which has only 640K of ram :)

@@J_i_m_ Well, remember Steve Jobs saying the Mac would never need more than 128Kb of ram. What a slug the original Mac was. (I did a major term paper using write soon after the machine came out. While it turned out looking fantastic, it was a pain to write it on a single disk drive mac...)

Someone reverse-engineered the “PAK” (“Product Authorization Key”) algorithm that DEC introduced for its VMS OS about a decade before this, and even that is more complicated. It involves CRC-32, some bit-swizzling, and something called a “Purdy hash”. Of course, it is not so easy to deduce any date information just from looking at the resulting key. Microsoft: “26 drive letters ought to be enough for anybody!” (Oh, and the mastermind behind VMS went to work at Microsoft a few years after this, where he was responsible for ... Windows NT.)

​​​@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 Even Nintendo 8bit games had stronger security for their game level passwords, than what Microsoft had for Windows. :D Most games used encrypted and checksummed passwords.

Seriously? How did I never stumble across that?

thats fking amazing how have I never heard that lol

I think with insanely cheap Windows 8 upgrade you could do something similar. Install the software without a Product Key as an inactivated version. And then repeat the install to “upgrade” to the full version.

Nah just Microsoft saying let's screw the public by thinking we did some work... and charge them 200 bucks

Well, you have to balance the key algorithm complexity vs the number of the product that you are expected to sell. You can't choose too restrictive of an algorithm, otherwise it would not support the needed number of unique keys... The good thing about having the key validation algorithm built into the software like back then was that you could buy the software and use it without ever having to contact Microsoft to verify the serial number... At some point, they changed it to needing an internet connection and they use that to validate the key and whether they key has been previously used... And then there was that obnoxious bit where the O/S might decide to quit working because you upgraded the hardware enough on your machine that it thought you were using it on a new machine... When I buy a piece of software, I want to be able to use it on however many machines I might own since I'm only using them one at a time... These days, I've switched to Linux for most of my home PCs, but there's still two PCs that can boot Windoze for software that does not have a acceptable Linux replacement...

Wait. It doesn't check for identical keys in the connected games? I got another one: C&C3 checks for the disk when starting the game. But only when starting it, after the game is running you can hand it over to the next guiy

@@HappyBeezerStudios security is always a tradeoff between costs of complexity for legit users versus getting in the way of those they’re trying to protect against: either extreme is typically undesired. A car door lock only ever keeps out those that don’t want to take the risks of getting caught breaking into a car: anyone can get into a car with enough effort.

Jonesing to upgrade from windows 3.1 eh?

His net was slow

Except there's no functions to check for a specific key. It's valid because the first three digits aren't on the blacklist and the sum of the seven digits is divisible by 7.

As far as I can remember Office 97 worked with all 1's.

I think phone activation was done to make people who are willing to pay for windows pay again, since it would only activate online 3 times. People who didnt know you could call up microsoft and get it reset would just buy another copy.. probably seeing it as a opportunity to upgrade. Anyone who didnt wantto pay could still get around it cause there was always a working non-online way used by large corporations.

I think other comments here indicate, yes.

Should have backed up that registry, and avoided the monthly reinstall.

This work for oem keys?

Everyone is guarding B

Nah it should be Door-stuck-door-stuck-pls-i-beg-you is the valid key

@@npcraywar2907DOOR1-STUCK-PLEAS-IBEGU-DILIH

@@HaukeHaien Where is your P90?

Actually a good idea lmao

Probably *is* an upgrade

@@MadScientist267 He he.

It's gonna be 9.5 times better!

I like how he said "upgrade"

I think Win2K was probably the best version of Windoze... It wasn't that bloated back then, but it seems to have gone downhill since then... All too often though a "new version" is just seems to be a repackaging of the previous version, but with all the menu options changed so that you can't find what you're wanting to do anymore... :(

security by intimidation

increasing the user base with weak keys

Well I think they weren't trying to use it the way most think. Just for support purposes, if you bought a Compaq with preinstalled 95 you would need to call Compaq for support. If you called Microsoft and provided them with your Product ID they would instantly see that you are not eligible for support. Same goes for OEM versions you bought elsewhere. It's not the software they're protecting, it's the support.

@@gentuxable Did Microsoft seriously ever support end customers? I guess Indian fake callcenters are doing that much better.

@@mrechbreger They do. I got my key replaced with working one, because there were issues with upgrading from 8.1 to 10.

@Marcus Mysteriously New? Minesweeper on win 95 rocks!

Yeah, and Windows 10 doesn’t even come with Pinball. Worst OS ever.

Oh the memories

Winæro is pretty cools softtwaee

ah yeah, i remember win95 - the last one where mode 13 int 10 was possible

Or 10 mins to end of shift. And on a promise 😉

@@dogwalker666 manager: "make sure you finish that key validation before you clock out"

@@llVIU ha ha yup!

@@llVIU *that guy half way home* "Ah fuck i forgot"

i think it’s technically easier to forget about mistakes the stupider they are

This is what happens when legitimate way is too cumbersome - people will pirate even if they bought the thing to escape lots of meaningless manual work.

Back then you couldn't even save a password with more than 8 characters. Seriously. I complained to a provider. They didn't change anything. They left it at 8 characters. The national provider for British internet. Obviously they preferred it that way.

same with half life and "aaaaaaaaaaaa" i can't remember how many digits

Brah you don't need to type the Q3 code. It just works

emabrace t h e *J*

@@mrylmz7754 valve and 3? Yeah right :D

Autodesk: 666-69696969

I remember using all A's.

The old Half-life also accepts the CD-Key if you type the number "3" 13 times... Obviously it didn't work to play on-line since the authentication servers refused that Key, so it just worked to play the game off-line or in LAN servers.

@@MCA0090 ironic...

@@MCA0090 I used 1234-12345-1234 (or something *very* similar to that) and it always worked for online/LAN.

All 7's for me.

Ah, tf2 reference

The brief case is still here

It’s an older joke sir, but it checks out.

@@generalralph6291 old but gold, bro

nice to see a tf2 refrence

lol

And upgraded Windows 10 must work on Pentium 166 MMX with 32 MB RAM.

Seems you had about a 1 in mod 7 chance! I’m so entertained by this, and expect these days it’ll be a bit more complex, likely requiring crypto computations to identify if the key can be legit created by a private key used, but the funnier thought is that may not be the case.

@@strictnonconformist7369 1 in mod 7? you mean 1 in 7? Also technically it's slightly less than that since 333, 444, ... 888, and 999 don't work. So instead of 1/7, it's 992/6951. Or to put it another way, instead of a 14.285714% chance, it's a 14.271327866494029636023593727521219968349877715436627823334771975255358941159545389152639907926916990361099122428427564379226010645950222989497913969213062868651992519062005466839303697309739605812113364983455617896705509998561358077974392173787944180693425406416342972234210904905768954107322687383110343835419364120270464681340814%. Insteringly, both of those 14% numbers' decimals are repeating, starting at the beggining. The longer number has 330 digits that repeat. Btw the 992/6951 came from 1/7 * (1-1/(1000-7)). the 1000 came from how many 3 digit numbers there are, and the -7 came from excluding 333, 444.... 999. You want more math? Ok then. Those two decimal numbers are off by 0.10070493454179254783484390735146022155085599194360523665659617321248741188318227593152064451158106747230614300% (repeated again, 110 decimal digits), also known as 1/993. 993 being one more than the 992 from earlier. edit: oh and that long percentage chance, it's a 1/7.00705645161290322580 chance, although only the last 15 digits there (the numbers after 705) are repeated

@@baraka629 dont you also get less features and denied support?

@@pugh.joseph Oh yeah, the legendary windows tech support we all know, love, and rely upon.

@@lambdaman3228 alright, good point 😅

I'd be confused too if slamming my head on the keyboard changed my operating system

@@chuckleshelicopterwigwamjo7315 lmao

LOL :D

@@chuckleshelicopterwigwamjo7315 lmao

@@chuckleshelicopterwigwamjo7315 Best comment i have read all day.

There was an urban legend during the AOL days that all shareware distributed had to have a valid unlock code somewhere in case it had a nefarious payload. The first program I tried I for some reason tried the zip code on the dialogue box. It accepted it. Only time my 1337 skillz ‘cracked’ anything !

ahh the days before online key validation

In case of software licenses, I guess, partly because it wasn't as easy to obtain the distribution itself. Also, there was no telemetry, so no piracy statistics.

Excel (and other Office programs) allowed you to write scripts / macros in VBA language (Visual Basic for applications). You could set a script to be run upon document open and it would run even if you didn't know the password. In that moment I realized that the password is not protection (encryption) but just obfuscation.

U can remove the password edition protection from office files woth 7zip

That is to a point true with all software back in the day. Operating systems such as Android and iOS has security as a priority from the beginning.

People today pay 35 bucks or more in labor to install RAM. I dont think they really are worried about making security an issue :-)

This is security through bluffing.

But it did work

You seem to be assuming that you know what the threat model was.

Why is security through obscurity bad?

@@pugh.josephecurity through obscurity is like this: You have a big doorway leading into your house. You know it's there, but you never close it, because your house is a little off the beaten path. You figure that any burglars will only strike populated cities and just not care enough to notice. And maybe you're right. But if one *does* happen by your house, and sees that door still wide open... you wouldn't exactly get much sympathy for having your house ransacked because you _could_ have at least taken basic security measures. You just didn't, because you were so confident that it would never happen to you.

imagine the poor guy with that telephone number

@@HappyBeezerStudios Back in '95 that 0 in front of the number would have just called the operator.

Ok grandpa, let's get you back to bed.

@@n646n 😂😂🤣🤣

You forgot about USENET and other BBSes

you could do the same with office back in the day so it was know and shared at the time. Always used 0's and a 7 on the end.

IRC was the social media then.😉 today only the hardcore hackers use it for risky information

Primary keys - Organic milk and quality sugar.🙂

SUBG0123445 will do it too... ;-)

YOLO0042069 works also

He said it has to be divisible by 7 with no remainders so 69426 for the first and 123459 for the second!

@@davidwilliams1720 u got my typo. thx.

The Win9x login login was just for show, like the whole "user" system, as there was nothing actually protecting anyone from opening another user's stuff IIRC.

To be fair it was pretty early on in their validation schemes, Windows 3.1 didn't have any at all except to look for a certain name of file from DOS

In 30 years people will probably say the same about current day validation

@@jaaplallie there will be a quantum ai validation and today's Technique will be easily broken Below 1 second. Side info, also there will be no need for humans

@@robertmazurowski5974 still waiting for the hoverboards and flying car conversion kits that were promised for 2k15. Lets just wait and see what the future will bring 😉

Back in the day this was used, the people weren't as aggressive at stealing as they are these days. And without a fast internet connection, people didn't have as much a chance to break these things. If they did, this would have been broken within a day or so. Dave Plummer, the guy that designed this has an interesting channel called 'Dave's Garage', where he talks about his time at Microsoft.

probably due to stupid legacy mistakes like the video showed

@@ishid_anfarded_king unless it blow up and goes viral probably not

Ukraine/Russia: your powers are useless here...

@@ishid_anfarded_king I remember working for a company that had old, legacy, *obsolete* software. I immediately wondered "wth? Piracy on obsolete software - with inspectors 'round the corner - how idiot can one be?" (Yeah, we dumped the whole thing...what else should we have done anyway...?)

well think about how long the install would be if it had a more complex check then just if it is divided by 7 with 0 left over it is valid. One a 133MHz CPU which was common to have back then it already took hours now if you had a complex key that was hard to crack due to the math behind it was more than just 1 math symbol then done it would take more than the minute it already took to get past there. Newer computers while it is a cloud key check not a local key but in the 1990s requiring your user to have the internet was not a good business plan for mass adoption. Apple was still trying to over take them at only 30% of the market for Apple back then too. win95 kind of took the market share away from apple. Windows never gave it back either.

@@yumri4 regardless of that it would still be very easy to have better rules for the key to make it harder to crack

@@radiance8940 i agree it would have been easy to have a better checksum but we don't know what the actual math the system did is we just saw the simplified version of it.

@@yumri4 they could have absolutely used PKI in using a private key to encode a number of digit combinations, and included a public key on the CD to see if it made sense, it would almost certainly have required a much longer serial number, which would have been more user-hostile by a lot, but it’d not be any problem to compute the check on any machine, and no network access required if done this way. Eventually people determined to do so will just tell others “hey, this key works, have fun!” even if nobody ever traces through the OS binary to reverse-engineer how it works. Not being able to depend on network access definitely limits any ability to enforce a key is only used once, and mass production CDs also are static, with each unique printing costing more than a single mass production run: I worked in the CD production plant where they were manufactured, in CD-ROM premastering.

Digits 4-10 added up to seven, I guess!

What game

@@DaVince21 I assume you mean 5-11?

@@wta1518 Yes, thanks!

@@wta1518 Common programmatic error, off by one.

That's what they do today, they give Windows 10 and 11 out for free to get people in

@@thepwrtank18 there are videos of some people in Microsoft explaining why piracy was beneficial to them. I am not sure if it was intended people, thought, there are very clever people out there, but some times they just do things with other intention, then it works and suddenly you can create a story of how succesful and brilliant you were. Specially some managers are expert on this.

Through nineties till mid-2000ies Microsoft raked money with large shovels. Profit from enterprise realm was more than enough to not care about petty piracy between home users and occasional small busineses. It was up to local anti-piracy agencies who in some countries (Germany, ahem) tried to be more saint that Papa. Easy entry in MS software realm via piracy indeed was a thing and I believe that MS deliberately exploited that.

They gave free updates to everyone from Win 7 to Win 10. It's pretty common knowledge that they don't make money from individuals like you and me. They make money from corporations that actually have to buy licenses.

Corel draw 7 had 111111111...1112 (don't remember how many ones there was, actually. Just type them all and replace the last one with 2.

Windows 98 had the 1112-1111111 key

@@squiddardmusic Just got a Win 98 Ce in the mail today, might be worth having a look at!

Care to explain?

@@1.8millionvolts87 watch the video.

@@1.8millionvolts87 This video by Flytech Videos explains it pretty well, a lot better than I could ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3DCEeASKNDk.html

@@waltercomunello121 ahhh sorry mate, was taking a loo back then. so i was just reading the omments lol

So technically 000-0000028 isn't a valid key but 000-0000056 should be?

id be curious to see the actual algorithm used back then

@@viper440 uint_64 default_key = 1234567890123; if(key == default_key) return true;

wish I knew this years back when I lost my jewel case w/ the ley

The first game I did this with was Sims 3. I lost the game case, but figured out that a certain set of keys works. You can even put those CD keys directly into EA Origin and get Sims 3 for free, as this was before internet validation of CD keys. That's how I got the digital version of it ~2-3 years ago. Unfortunately nowadays keys are created, registered, and validated by servers so you can't use duplicate keys, or make ones up.

hash... function? hash table doesn't filter...

Funny you talk about "7 years" despite mostly about the video is about 7. And I actually read this comment 7 hours later.

???

@@Trimint123 I almost give you a like but I realize that you have 7.

@@giatu1 samee

This video must've been such an awesome realization for you. It already was from me and I've never seen a computer on W95 before