wow, so they cracked how microsoft activates on upgrade's. I can see pirate's jumping with glee
Maybe not, it's a way of doing a clean install (instead of an upgrade and of the exact same version) on the same hardware that you already have a valid, activated, upgradeable copy of Windows on.
So, as such, would they really care?
I'd guess there are some hardware identification checks in the activation process as well, so wholesale cloning won't work. Certainly not in the long run even if you get away with it initially.
I have, back in W7 days, some upgrade kits (from XP/Vista). You can happily install these as a clean install rather than an upgrade - indeed MS tell you how to do it as you have to for XP! Most (if not all) of the copies I have installed have now upgraded to W10 with no issues.