Software pirates who want free copies of Windows Vista can find the Melinda Gates activation crack with little trouble; even well-known news outlets have posted the crack’s location on their Web sites. But there’s a catch: Microsoft limits Windows Vista activations with the Key Management Service to 180 days, meaning an unlicensed copy of Vista, hacked or not, won’t run forever.

After a year of braying about Vista’s enhanced security , Microsoft has a target on its back. And hackers have been quick to aim and shoot.
A newly released hack lets software pirates register unlicensed business copies of Vista for six months at a time. The new hack — named for Bill Gates’ wife, Melinda — takes advantage of a weakness in Microsoft’s Key Management Service.

Here’s how it works: Vista owners, including business users whose companies bought their software for them, have to prove their copy of Vista is legal by activating it with Microsoft’s servers over the Internet.

But companies that buy more than 25 copies of Vista’s business editions can use a shortcut, the Key Management Service, to activate their computers with a server that’s inside their office and run by their I.T. department.

The new hack lets a software pirate download a fake copy of the Key Management Service in a VMware image…