Today i took my first steps into the world of Linux by creating a bookable Mint Cinamon USB stick to fuck around on without wiping or portioning my laptop drive.
I realised windows has the biggest vulnerability for the average user.
While booting off of the usb I could access all the data on my laptop without having to input a password.
After some research it appears drives need to be encrypted to prevent this, so how is this not the default case in Windows?
I’m sure there are people aware but for the laymen this is such a massive vulnerability.
This is only a vulnerability if you suspect a threat actor might physically access your computer. For most people, this is not a concern. There’s also the issue that it has processing overhead, so it might make certain operations feel sluggish.
Encryption is not a panacea, because if someone ever forgets their password (something common for the layperson), the data on that drive is inaccessible. No chance for recovery. Certain types of software may not like it either. It’s one of many considerations someone should make when determining their own threat model, but this is not a security flaw. It’s an option for consideration, and most people are probably better off from a useability standpoint with encryption disabled by default.
It’s because of stuff like this that Microsoft wants people to create an Microsoft account. Recovery key automatically saved to your Microsoft account. For business the recovery key can also be automatically saved in a central location.
I think it just really goes to show you can’t hide anything on a computer physically.
I also feel this is something that should be taught in school (maybe it is i finished school over 13 years ago)
I always knew there were ways to recover files off of hard drives. I just assumed they needed to be physically remounted not just plug in a usb and off you go
What do you mean? It’s certainly possible when using encryption software such as bitlocker. It’s just not always enabled by default.In fact it’s saved my ass from total data loss a couple of times.
If you can make sure nobody has physical access to your pc than there’s a case to be made that you don’t need it, and if you can’t and are afraid that someone has both knowledge of this fact and the intention to (ab)use it, you use bitlocker.
Physically remounting a drive is the same thing as just plugging in a USB and going to town. Instead of taking the drives to a different system, you’re bringing the different system to the drives!
where I live they never really taught conputer literacy. some places teach ms office and that’s it