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Windows Phone 7 Marketplace DRM Cracked, App Piracy to Come?

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WPCentral was presented with a proof of concept program that can essentially strip the copy protection DRM mechanism found on Marketplace-purchased apps on Windows Phone 7 devices. Essentially, with the DRM protection removed, the opportunity will arise for piracy of apps made for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform.

Marketplace is Microsoft’s official app store for the Windows Phone 7 platform. The solution, right now, called FreeMarketplace, has so far not been released to the public and Microsoft has been contacted for an official statement into the matter.

As the concern for piracy grows, app developers may be reluctant to release apps onto platforms with easily broken DRM protection. Piracy concerns and an easy to crack DRM scheme is speculated as one of the major reasons why a lot of high-end games have not been ported to the Android platform. On Android, some game studios have created their own app store to battle Google’s Android Marketplace to control the distribution of games.

As an emerging platform, Microsoft may have to play a cat and mouse game with hackers as the company will be reliant on developers to help the platform grow with more titles, compelling apps, and useful programs for Windows Phone 7. The company so far has not responded to WPCentral’s enquiry.

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. GoodThings2Life

    12/29/2010 at 11:55 pm

    This is why single-use activation license keys exist or keys that are tied to user accounts. A good way to prevent piracy would be to always tie it to a user’s Windows Live account. The user certainly isn’t going to give out their password voluntarily… not more than once anyway, lol.

  2. David Lorenzin

    01/23/2012 at 5:28 am

    PROTECT-YOUR-Windows-Phone-APP-AGAINST–casual–PIRACY

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