The result was a rather feeble attempt to slow down the people who like to make illegal copies of Windows. Somebody decided to fill that extra capacity on the CD with dummy data and to have the Windows Setup program verify that the dummy data was still there. This, the logic went, would force people downloading a copy of the CD image to download an additional thirty or so megabytes of data. Remember, this was back in the day when "broadband" hadn't yet become a household word and mainstream users were using dial-up connections. Having to transfer an additional thirty megabytes of data over a 56Kb modem was a bit of an obstacle to slow users down—not that it would slow them down much by today's standards.
The person who was asked to implement this check needed a source for the dummy data. Now, he could have just called the CryptGenRandom function to generate 30 megabytes of cryptographically random bytes, but where's the fun in that? Instead, he dug through the archives and found a copy of Microsoft Bob. He took all the floppy disk images and combined them into one big file. The contents of the Microsoft Bob floppy disk images are not particularly random, so he decided to scramble up the data by encrypting it. When it came time to enter the encryption key, he just smashed his hand haphazardly across the keyboard and out came an encrypted copy of Microsoft Bob. That's what went into the unused space as ballast data on the Windows XP CD.
In the end, Windows XP became the most effective Microsoft Bob deployment tool ever developed. And if you go way back into your closet, dig out your copy of Windows XP, and can somehow channel the right spirits to mash your hands on the keyboard in exactly the right way, then out of your encryption program will come a copy of Microsoft Bob.
wow
The person who was asked to implement this check needed a source for the dummy data. Now, he could have just called the CryptGenRandom function to generate 30 megabytes of cryptographically random bytes, but where's the fun in that? Instead, he dug through the archives and found a copy of Microsoft Bob. He took all the floppy disk images and combined them into one big file. The contents of the Microsoft Bob floppy disk images are not particularly random, so he decided to scramble up the data by encrypting it. When it came time to enter the encryption key, he just smashed his hand haphazardly across the keyboard and out came an encrypted copy of Microsoft Bob. That's what went into the unused space as ballast data on the Windows XP CD.
In the end, Windows XP became the most effective Microsoft Bob deployment tool ever developed. And if you go way back into your closet, dig out your copy of Windows XP, and can somehow channel the right spirits to mash your hands on the keyboard in exactly the right way, then out of your encryption program will come a copy of Microsoft Bob.
