[GTALUG] You may already have a Windows licence and not know it …

[Giles Orr]

On Tue, 13 Apr 2021 at 19:48, Znoteer via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 13, 2021 at 07:42:47PM -0400, Stewart Russell via talk wrote:
> > If the file /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM exists (it's read-only to root),
> > there's probably a key embedded in there you can pull out with strings
> >
>
> I don't seem to have that file, and I'm not surprised.  Under what
> circumstances might one have that file on a linux system?

When you installed Linux on a Windows computer?  I wiped Windows, but
the firmware data is still there:

# cat /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM
MSDMU:_ASUS_Notebook     ASUSXXXX-KKKKK-KKKK-KKKKK-KKKKK#

(License string obfuscated.)  'strings' not required.

Fascinating: thank you Stewart, this may make it possible to install
Windows 10 in VirtualBox - of course I still have to lay hands on a
matching version of Windows, although those are easier to find than
legitimate license keys.  Hmm - I wonder if the "ASUS" at the
beginning of the key means it only works with Asus versions of W10 ...

-- 
Giles
https://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr at gmail.com