- cross-posted to:
- technology@piefed.social
- cross-posted to:
- technology@piefed.social
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/879557
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It’s not a security flaw, it’s by design. Microsoft has been building this surveillance apparatus for years, and the purchase of government access to your computer and data using your tax dollars is a lucrative alignment of state and corporate power. Their recent design choices point to a rabid desperation to turn your PC into an Apple-style walled-garden.
It goes like this:
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Require online Microsoft account creation.
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Require TPM compliance to run Windows.
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Forcibly encrypt the user’s data under the guise of “security”, even without permission or even user action. (Encryption is good! Right?)
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Link your identity, payment information, data, online activity, and encryption keys to your hardware ID.
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Record everything you do and use that data to train an AI model with onboard tensor hardware.
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Exfiltrate the entire model, or just query it remotely for “online services.” Or, in this case, just have MS give you the fucking recovery keys. lol
All done “securely” with tamper resistance and mathematical verifiability that whatever is on your device is yours, and that you took that action with limited plausible deniability.
If you think you’ve got nothing to hide, think again about the current activities of ICE, law enforcement investigations based on reproductive health data, the pornography suppression movement, age verification, and the data harvesting of dissenting speech. What’s legal today can quickly become “illegal” tomorrow. The constitution is just a piece of paper in a fancy climate controlled box.
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If they’re selling bitlocker as “full-disk encryption”, doesn’t that open them up to a class action since encryption with a backdoor isn’t encryption?
Nah, it’s encryption all right, they just back up the key in case you lose it. Which is a feature. https://aka.ms/bitlockerrecovery
I hear iMessage e2e-encrypted messages are also backed up into cloud as plaintext…
lol. Last time I checked the rule of law in the US only matters if corporations want it to
Oh you can sue if you have Epic Games level of money and access to lawyers. Otherwise corporate says “fuck you”.
No they’re not really technically “selling” it. Its bundled with Windows.
Its the home edition thing where they require a microsoft account. Afaik, for the Pro version of Windows, Bitlocker doesn’t require a microsoft account.
The keys were very likely uploaded to the linked MS-account.
This is communicated as a backup in case you loose the key.Breach of trust? Yep
Backdoor? Not very much.Uploading the key to the cloud is a backdoor. The encryption is only as secure as the your key.
Sure doesnt sound like that to me.
A backdoor is a typically covert method of bypassing normal authentication or encryption in a computer, product, embedded device (e.g. a home router), or its embodiment
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backdoor_(computing)
Not very covert if it is offered to a user.
If MS gives up the key that is stored plainly in their system, that is a problem. But not a backdoor.
This is quite literally the police knocking on the front door and demanding the key.This is a meaningless, pedantic argument. Call it backdoor or something else, it does not matter. What matters is that it renders the encryption worthless.
If I stick the key outside of the apartment the lock is also useless.
In the end it’s the carelessness of the user and not some nefarious scheme the big bad corp trying to come for your homework folder.
You should really touch some grass and stop playing cyberpunk2077 so much. For your own mental being.
We’re talking about the default option here.
Exposing? Microsoft has made it very clear for a while that your Bitlocker keys are synced to your Microsoft account.
Hell, they even have a support page for it. Most of their support pages are nearly useless, but this one is even readable by a normal person.
And before someone mentions the part about Microsoft Support not having access to keys (because some smart ass always does for this stuff)… Just think for a second. Of course customer support doesn’t have access to the keys. What Support can do is not a limit for legal disclosure. A legal warrant (like used here) means they’ll give any info they have in a heartbeat.
On Linux, selecting LUKS when you install encrypts the disk without the potential for this problem. So far it’s proven to be very reliable at stopping state level actors, just don’t use a password that you use elsewhere
You can also, with a bit of fiddling use hardware security keys like Yubikey: https://gist.github.com/cmedianu/470a49038e919cf5bc98cd0d2299c484 if you don’t want to remember passwords (You can also install a password in another LUKS slot and it will fall-back to the password if your key fails)
But don’t forget to upload a recovery key to your favorite pastebin site. It is easy to loose access otherwise!
Oh no, who could have possibly seen this coming when Microsoft decided to back up your full-disk encryption key automatically to OneDrive.
Smart of them to deploy automatic full disk encryption just as open source projects like Trucrypt and Veracrypt were starting to become mainstream, capturing their market share (Netscape Navigator-style). Very incompetent of them to include many glaring backdoors that completely defeats the encryption that they offer.
In addition to being vulnerable to law enforcement through subpoenas on the stored key. Anytime you run a Windows update and the system has to reboot, it writes a ‘clear key’ to the hard drive which can be easily retrieved if the disk is stolen and also they bypass TPM Validation.
You know, the thing that is so important to have that you were forced to buy an entirely new computer… it is not active during a system update and anybody who had access to your hard drive can write arbitrary code into your system files.
Well, you would think that this isn’t very useful, after all they would have to have pretty good timing to catch you updating your computer to remove the hard drive, right?
Nope, if they steal your whole computer and plug it into power and a network connection, the next time a Windows update hits the system will automatically apply the update (absent a very specific Group Policy) and write the full-disk encryption key to the hard drive before shutting down.
I’m no expert computerologist, but I think that any system that requires anybody but you to have your key is insecure. If this is the kind of poor design choices that they make in regards to disk encryption then I would personally have no confidence that their proprietary code is not equally porous.
This is configurable; you can set BitLocker to always require a password on boot. If you do that, the clearkey doesn’t get placed (yet). If you set this mode, the key also doesn’t get uploaded to OneDrive. Of course, there’s a big warning when you set it up, and it recommends you print off and save the one time recovery key list.
Easier just to use an OS that doesn’t require you to jump through hoops to secure it though.
You can also disable it with a Group Policy too and delete any keys that were uploaded to Microsoft with manage-bde while adding your own keys, but for the average person Bitlocker is going to be how it comes by default.
Pre-builts are even worse because that’s another party who has had access to your keys and there are not laws that they would violate by keeping copies (for your convenience, of course)
’m no expert computerologist, but I think that any system that requires anybody but you to have your key is insecure.
Computerologist here. You are 100% correct. If anyone says otherwise, they are selling you something.
My pa always told me that if someone says something on the Internet you can take them at their word, so I trust these credentials.
TrueCrypt, my beloved. Such an amazing set of features and super easy to use. I so wish there was a modern open-source equivalent with the same intuitive approach. I especially liked the ability to do fancy stuff like disguising data with a false password or using any file as the key.
How about a modern fork of Truecrypt that looks and works exactly like it?
Have you looked at Veracrypt?
Well shoot. It’s my lucky day. And cross platform even! Thanks!
2026 linux
One more reason never to use a
MicrosoftMicroslop product.This is not directly on Microsoft as you have to be either ignorant or special kind of stupid to upload your encryption keys to US cloud. The government can request access to any data and a company can’t do anything.
The only way to resist this is to not store anything unencrypted from your customers which is quite doable but clearly microsoft has no interest in this.
It’s a bit directly on Microsoft, unless you go out of your way, bitlocker will upload the keys to Microsoft. They assume you want them to help recover your data if your tpm becomes unavailable.
Interesting fun fact, when I tried to swype type bitlocker it really wanted to put bootlicker instead.
In most situations, your BitLocker recovery key is automatically backed up when BitLocker is first activated:
Unless your base argument is “Microsoft users are all stupid”, then I remind you that this is not only default behavior, but is mandatory if your account is associated with an EmtraID account (i.e. any business or school)
Yes, my point stands.
Windows no longer allows local accounts.
It does.
- A user in the EU
Edit:
MS KB entry in Germany: https://support.microsoft.com/de-de/windows/verwalten-von-benutzerkonten-in-windows-104dc19f-6430-4b49-6a2b-e4dbd1dcdf32- section: “Erstellen eines Benutzerkontos”
Third step, option C
Wenn Sie die Option Ich habe keine Anmeldeinformationen für diese Person auswählen, können Sie sich für eine neue E-Mail-Adresse registrieren und ein neues Microsoft-Konto erstellen. Wenn Sie ein lokales Konto erstellen möchten, wählen Sie die Option Benutzer ohne Microsoft-Konto hinzufügen aus.
Is it made easy for the average user?
Absolutely not.Is it impossible?
No.
Just not use Microslop. It’s easier.
Finally some users with a level and rational brain…
I was heavily downvoted in another instance (eyeroll).I thought only the Chinese government had access to Chinese company data.
I’m not surprised. The standard Microsoft disclosure on my work laptop at the login screen states any use ofbthw computer may be monitored and/ or recovered by Microsoft and law enforcement. That’s why Microsoft products are not present in my home.
“Flaw”
Regarding this as a flaw is a bit thin right? Massive breach of trust and huge legal issues.
If you really were still naive enough to think that a public tech company cares about your right to privacy at that point, it’s pretty much on you.
Well, if thats not enough of a reason to move off of Microsoft products, then i don’t know what is.
