Maxxuss cracks Intel only code

When Skype and Intel announced their joint collaboration at last year's IDF, a lot of journos recognized the deal as preparation of the terrain for Intel-only features. Indeed, with the latest version of Skype, a product of eBay Inc - enabled 10-way conference calls, but only if Intel hardware was used. AMD users were treated with "only" a 5-way option. Both Skype and Intel claimed that this was due to new, superior Intel marchitecture.

However, since 10-way works on old NetBurst marchitecture (Pentium D) as well, it was obvious that this was a marketing plot for a marchitecture world.

Of course, until Maxxuss came along. Well known enthusiast from the sphere of MacOSX86 project took a look at Skype, whacked the marketing code and enabled 10-way conference using other processors. The "protection" was actually a string in code that checks for "GenuineIntel" string inside the CPU. If the La Intella is detected, 10-way works. If string returns something else, like "AuthenticAMD", boom! Only 5-way.