When is a sport not a sport? When you by no means win.
For years, virtualization software program maker Parallels supplied the prospect to win a free product key in the event you “stump the KeyGenie,” a digital robotic which customers can play towards. Normally, customers should purchase a product key to run the software program past its two-week free trial. But if you may make it by 5 questions with out the robotic guessing what you’re pondering, the robotic says a key “may be yours.”
But it seems it’s an impossibility.
Security researcher John Wethington alerted TechCrunch to the KeyGenie sport greater than a 12 months after he instructed Parallels that the sport was unimaginable to win. He examined the supply code of the webpage to see the way it labored. He rapidly discovered that it doesn’t matter what a person does, the code by no means permits a person to win a free product key.
“It’s to get people to sign up for a trial by pretending to give them a chance at a free license,” he stated. “But the source code proves it never will.”
We requested three safety researchers to independently confirm our findings.
Yonathan Klijnsma, a risk researcher at cyberthreat intelligence agency RiskIQ, seemed on the code and located that the robotic’s responses have been hardcoded.
“There’s never any product key,” he instructed TechCrunch. “You have that winning screen but there’s never a product key on the page,” he stated. “You can trigger the case for getting a key but there is no way to get to it.”
Though it’s attainable to trick the sport into pondering you’ve received, nothing occurs — and no key’s ever awarded.
A screencap of the KeyGenie sport; no product key’s ever produced (Image: TechCrunch)
“It’s a bunch of hardcoded if-else statements that just take you to the same widget in the end,” stated Edwin Foudil, a safety researcher who additionally carried out a cursory assessment of the positioning. And Baptiste Robert, who’s recognized for locating safety vulnerabilities in apps and web sites, stated his personal checks present nothing is ever pulled from the server after the person wins, suggesting the winner isn’t served a product key.
“It seems to be a fake game,” stated Robert.
We contacted Parallels previous to publication however spokesperson John Uppendahl didn’t remark. If that modifications, we’ll replace.
The KeyGenie website was born greater than 5 years in the past after Parallels discovered its standard desktop emulation software program was recurrently falling sufferer to software program piracy. Hackers would crack the software program’s product key algorithm, then construct and share their product key mills — generally known as keygens — on file-sharing websites. Quickly, these keygens floated to the highest of engines like google, making person piracy even simpler.
Parallels constructed the aptly named “KeyGenie” sport so it might rise to the highest of search outcomes and substitute the unlawful keygen search outcomes.
One of Parallels’ advertising companies on the time printed a weblog publish claiming that KeyGenie “will actually hand out keys,” and that the sport was “programmed randomly.” The publish, printed seven months later, “generated dozens of trials” and “four-figures in revenue.”
The Federal Trade Commission, which regulates probably misleading promoting and advertising, didn’t remark outdoors enterprise hours.
