Microsoft is using TPM chips to crack down on pirated Windows activations
Software Security windows piracy Microsoft is using TPM chips to crack down on pirated Windows activations Microsoft targets KMS-based Windows piracy with mandatory TPM attestation starting August 2026 By Alfonso Maruccia July 25, 2026, 9:06 Add TechSpot Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. A hot potato: After introducing Windows 11, Microsoft forced the entire PC ecosystem to turn the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) into a standard component for every new motherboard or CPU.
- ▪Software Security windows piracy Microsoft is using TPM chips to crack down on pirated Windows activations Microsoft targets KMS-based Windows piracy with mandatory TPM attestation starting August 2026 By Alfonso Maruccia July 25, 2026, 9:0
- ▪TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust.
- ▪A hot potato: After introducing Windows 11, Microsoft forced the entire PC ecosystem to turn the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) into a standard component for every new motherboard or CPU.
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Story provenance
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Record
| Original publisher | TechSpot |
| Canonical URL | https://www.techspot.com/news/113232-microsoft-using-tpm-chips-crack-down-pirated-windows.html |
| Publication time | Sat, 25 Jul 2026 09:06 -0500 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-25T14:07:14.885Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-25T14:07:14.885Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | aGuBx-82pXNF |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Software Security windows piracy Microsoft is using TPM chips to crack down on pirated Windows activations Microsoft targets KMS-based Windows piracy with mandatory TPM attestation starting August 2026 By Alfonso Maruccia July 25, 2026, 9:06 Add TechSpot Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. A hot potato: After introducing Windows 11, Microsoft forced the entire PC ecosystem to turn the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) into a standard component for every new motherboard or CPU. Now, Redmond is exploiting the now-pervasive device to further strengthen the Windows activation process in the enterprise market.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at TechSpot.
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