A group of developers who call themselves Massgrave have successfully hacked Microsoft's activation tools for Windows and Office. The collective has uploaded a set of PowerShell scripts to their repository on GitHub, where anyone can download and use the tools to activate any edition of Windows or any perpetual-license Office edition without paying Microsoft's licensing fees.

The most recent update includes a module that the group claims will allow users to install Windows 10 security updates after the end of support in October 2025, without paying the hefty fees that Microsoft charges for an Extended Security Update subscription.

In a long blog post, a Massgrave developer explained how the group was able to reverse-engineer Microsoft's antipiracy mechanism, the Software Protection Platform. Using a variety of techniques, the scripts can activate PCs running Windows 7/8.x/10/11 and their corresponding server versions. The scripts also support activation of Office 2010 and later versions, but only for the perpetual-license products and not for Microsoft 365 subscriptions. This chart includes details of how each activation method works.

Running the script requires only the barest of technical knowledge. If you can open a PowerShell window and paste in a command, you can use the tool's simple menu-driven interface, which is shown below: