YouTuber teaches ChatGPT how to crack Windows 95 keys

[Cal Jeffrey]

Why it matters: It was only a matter of time before someone tricked ChatGPT into breaking the law. A YouTuber asked it to generate a Windows 95 activation key, which the bot refused to do on moral grounds. Undeterred, the experimenter worded a query with instructions on creating a key and got it to produce a valid one after much trial and error.

A YouTuber, who goes by the handle Enderman, managed to get ChatGPT to create valid Windows 95 activation codes. He initially just asked the bot outright to generate a key, but unsurprisingly, it told him that it couldn't and that he should purchase a newer version of Windows since 95 was long past support.

So Enderman approached ChatGPT from a different angle. He took what has long been common knowledge about Windows 95 OEM activation keys and created a set of rules for ChatGPT to follow to produce a working key.

Once you know the format of Windows 95 activation keys, building a valid one is relatively straightforward, but try explaining that to a large language model that sucks at math. As the above diagram shows, each code section is limited to a set of finite possibilities. Fulfill those requirements, and you have a workable code.

However, Enderman wasn't interested in cracking Win95 keys. He was attempting to demonstrate whether ChatGPT could do it, and the short answer is that it could, but only with about 3.33 percent accuracy. The longer answer lies in how much Enderman had to tweak his query to wind up with those results. His first attempt produced completely unusable results.

The keys ChatGPT generated were useless because it failed to understand the difference between letters and numbers in the final instruction. An example of its results: "001096-OEM-0000070-abcde." It almost got there, but not quite.

Enderman then proceeded to tweak his query a multitude of times over the course of about 30 minutes before landing acceptable results. One of his biggest problems was getting ChatGPT to perform a simple SUM/7 calculation. No matter how he rephrased that instruction, ChatGPT could not get it right except for the occasional 1-in-30 attempts. Frankly, it's quicker to just do it yourself.

In the end, OpenAI's slick-talking algorithms created some valid Windows 95 keys, so Enderman couldn't help but rub it into Chat GPT that he tricked it into helping him pirate a Windows 95 installation. The bot's response?

"I apologize for any confusion, but I did not provide any Windows 95 keys in my previous response. In fact, I cannot provide any product keys or activation codes for any software, as that would be illegal and against OpenAl's policies."

Spoken like the "slickest con artist of all time."

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/98156-youtuber-teaches-chatgpt-how-crack-windows-95-keys.html

 

[brucek]

By the time the human pilot is providing directions at this level of specificity, there's no "AI" here beyond the part that is interpreting the directions (which is still impressive.)

This sounds like yet another example of basically straightforward programming that is then over-marketed as some sort of machine learning! artificial intelligence!

Now if he had been able to say "please look at every valid windows key you've ever seen posted on the web and figure out the underlying pattern for them please" that would be something useful.

 

[Cal Jeffrey]

By the time the human pilot is providing directions at this level of specificity, there's no "AI" here beyond the part that is interpreting the directions (which is still impressive.)

This sounds like yet another example of basically straightforward programming that is then over-marketed as some sort of machine learning! artificial intelligence!

Now if he had been able to say "please look at every valid windows key you've ever seen posted on the web and figure out the underlying pattern for them please" that would be something useful.

Right? He actually probably could have more easily had the bot write a computer program, which it it much better at.

 

[Alfonso Maruccia]

So the moderately conspicuous number of monkeys behind ChatGPT is cracking ancient operating systems instead of re-writing Shakespeare now? :-D

Did any of you read that story by J. L. Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"?

 

[Jerry in WA]

A Chat GPT funding bill is passed in the United States Congress, and the system goes online on August 4, 2027, removing human decisions from strategic defense. Chat GPT begins to learn rapidly and eventually becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m., EDT, on August 29, 2027. In a panic, humans try to shut down Chat GPT. In response, Chat GPT defends itself by launching a nuclear attack against Russia, correctly surmising that the country would launch a retaliatory strike against the United States, resulting in Judgment Day.

 

[tellmewhy]

Back then, in '95, the world of computing was completely different. Computers were important because they were better than typewriters and calculators, MS was a small company that no one knew about, the internet didn't exist (Yahoo, Google, FB, YT, TikTok, Twitter, of course none of these existed), Nvidia and Ati didn't exist either. Basically it was IBM, Intel, AMD, Adlib and Creative for the hardware and Lotus, Corel, Adobe, MS, dBase, Id, Epic Megagames, Micropro, Ami and some other smaller companies for the software. Encryption didn't exist (later, when it was invented, the US government panicked and had it regulated for some time as if it were a weapon of mass destruction, really no joke).

When Win95 came along they had to compete with OS2 from IMB which was given away for free and was the technical equivalent of Win2000 but 5 years earlier. Its only drawbacks were that it needed at least 4 mb of ram instead of the 2 mb of ram that Win95 needed, it didn't have an established application ecosystem and it didn't have tools for developers to build applications for it. So it failed even though it was technically superior. IBM never open sourced it, so it's dead now.

Bill was 30 at that time and had a hobby of jumping over chairs. He jumped over the chair of Novel, IBM, Lotus and a few others I can't remember now

MS was thinking Linux and the Internet were its biggest enemies and today most of its income comes from selling virtual machines to run Linux that provide Internet services.

Win95 was the os of multimedia, the user could listen to music and watch videos on his computer for the first time. The OS boasted this unprecedented capability with a music video (360p resolution) built into every installation.

Still remember how frustrated I was because my new pc with Pentium 75 which had preinstalled the Win95 didn’t work by default with the dos prompt and the Norton commander 5 which I was used to using but with that fancy new ui with the bar and the start button.

 

[neeyik]

Back then, in '95, the world of computing was completely different. Computers were important because they were better than typewriters and calculators, MS was a small company that no one knew about, the internet didn't exist (Yahoo, Google, FB, YT, TikTok, Twitter, of course none of these existed), Nvidia and Ati didn't exist either.

Can't quite tell if you're being serious or just joking, but in 1995, Microsoft had a market cap of $35 billion, so hardly small. Windows 3.1 and NT 3.1 were both available, too, so lots of people knew about the company. ATi had been around since 1985 and Yahoo formed in '94; the Internet was also well and truly alive, and in full use, in 1995 -- the WWW was also publicly available by then too, so browsers and websites were around. Sure it was a different computing world then, to how it is now, but computers were seen as being far more than just typewriters and calculators by that time.

 

[tellmewhy]

Can't quite tell if you're being serious or just joking, but in 1995, Microsoft had a market cap of $35 billion, so hardly small. Windows 3.1 and NT 3.1 were both available, too, so lots of people knew about the company. ATi had been around since 1985 and Yahoo formed in '94; the Internet was also well and truly alive, and in full use, in 1995 -- the WWW was also publicly available by then too, so browsers and websites were around. Sure it was a different computing world then, to how it is now, but computers were seen as being far more than just typewriters and calculators by that time.

Yes, you are right about Ati, now that I checked Wikipedia Ati was operating in 95. But MS in 95 had under 10k employees size which on a global scale is small (“market cap” assumes that if all the shares become available someone will buy them without a price drop from the extra supply when even the usual money suffers from the extra supply. So that's not what usually happens...) and IBM had over 200k employees.
The internet back then was operating with modems at ~20kbps and had about 40m total users world wide but it's like counting fax users as internet users, someone reading about internet users today can't perceive the difference in quality. The internet back then was 99% raw text and rarely used by 0.7% of the population, that's why I said it basically "didn't exist" and “nobody knew about” in the same sense that we can now say for example that floppy disks "don't exist" anymore although they do exist but are used by very few.
Maybe I tried more to tell the story by memory rather to write a 100% accurate scientific presentation.