Hackers have long been defeating Microsoft's copy protection mechanisms with elegant solutions. However, for the past year, the only known way to defeat Vista's activation was to alter the clock on the PC, perform binary patching or replace particular system files with those from older beta versions. Even though the technique worked, it prevented users from applying various patches and hotfixes. A hacker group called Pantheon uncovered a clever trick to activating Vista using it's own mechanism against it. Microsoft allegedly allowed OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) to bypass the activation process by providing activation data files locally. Pantheon simply collected samples of the files and emulate the OEM environment allowing Vista to happily self activate.