Ninjutsu OS, a new software tool that heavily modifies Windows 10 with a huge number of tweaks, mods and extra tools, has been hit with a DMCA complaint by Microsoft. According to the copyright notice, the customizing, tweaking and disabling of Windows 10 features, even when that improves privacy, amounts to a violation of Microsoft's software license.

Since Windows was first released, people have been modifying variants of the world-famous operating system to better fit their individual requirements.

Many of these tweaks can be carried out using tools provided within the software itself but the recently-released Ninjutsu OS aims to take Windows 10 modding to a whole new level.

Released on May 7, Ninjutsu OS claims to take Windows 10 and transform it into a penetration testing powerhouse, adding huge numbers of tools (around 800) aimed at security experts, a few for regular users (qBitTorrent and Tor Browser, for example) while also removing features considered unwanted or unneeded in such an environment.

From June 6, 2020, the project was hosted on Github but according to a DMCA complaint filed by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) on behalf of Microsoft, Ninjutsu OS violates Microsoft’s copyrights.

“BSA has determined that GitHub.com (specifically, content made available on GitHub through the link listed below) is providing access to copyrighted, nonpublic, proprietary information of our member Microsoft,” the complaint reads.

“The link leads to copyrighted material pertaining to Microsoft. Specifically, the copyrighted material in question can be found at the following link: https://github.com/ninjutsu-project/ninjutsu-project.github.io.”

Disabling Windows 10 Features is a License Breach, Claim States

While that link to the project has now been taken down by Github (Hasan insists that the page “does not contain any violation of Microsoft’s rights”), the complaint goes on to highlight several features of Ninjutsu OS that are claimed to be infringing. As advertised and specifically highlighted by BSA/Microsoft they are:

– Customize Windows 10 with powerful tweak and optimize.

– Protect your privacy by tweak and customize Windows 10.

– Disable many of the annoying features built into Windows.

– Unwanted Windows components removal.

– Remove/Disable many Windows programs and services.

According to the complaint, the above actions by Ninjutsu OS as mentioned on its Github page provide a “work around technical restrictions of the software”, something which supposedly violates Microsoft’s software license terms.