The invention discloses a universal digital rights protection method under a Windows platform; The method disclosed by the invention, through hardware fingerprint verification, can realize locally and automatically decrypting and authorizing to use a protected file; when the hardware verification is not passed, an online authentication way is further provided to meet parts of autonomies of a user, such as multi-equipment sharing, hardware change and the like; on I/O intercept processing of the file, file filtering and driving on an inner nuclear layer are adopted and are cooperatively used with an IAT (import address table) API (application program interface) Hook technology on an application layer; when the inner nuclear layer intercepts a read-write content of the file, any file read-write detail on the application layer can be neglected, thereby enabling the method more accurate and efficient; the IAT API HOOK is closely linked with a specific application program, so in relative to the monitoring that is realized by a keypad mouse hook of the application layer, the method is more targeted to carry out monitoring and limiting on file operations such as copy, paste, file save as and the like on the application layer; in addition, by the method of file filtering and driving, and plaintext memory area authority setting, the plaintext in a memory is protected nicely and the probability which the plaintext in the memory is leaked is greatly reduced.