Microsoft Security - an oxymoron

Hackers crack 'theft-proof' WindowsXP
LESS than a week after Microsoft launched WindowsXP with a £700 million 
publicity campaign, an anti-theft feature in the software has been cracked by 
hackers.
BitArts Labs, a security company in Nottingham, said yesterday that
Chinese hackers had bypassed the registration process for the operating
system.
Microsoft built a new form of copyright protection, called Product
Activation, into WindowsXP. By disabling WindowsXP if it was not
immediately registered with Microsoft, it was meant to ensure the software
could only ever be loaded on to one computer.
However, pirated copies of WindowsXP stripped of their protection
mechanism can be freely downloaded from the internet, said John Safa, of
BitArts. "The hackers had been really very clever."