The word “Gave” is really doing some heavy lifting in that title. Microsoft produced the keys in response to a warrant as required by law.
If you don’t want a company, any company, to produce your data when given a warrant then you can’t give the company that data. At all. Ever.
Not fast food joints, not Uber, not YouTube, not even the grocery store.
Yes. But this completely invalidates the encryption. If anyone can decrypt your data without you giving the keys to them, it is not really encrypted.
Its not anyone though. Not anyone can get a warrant and demand the keys
Anyone as in “a single person”. They don’t mean everyone has access.
The encryption key is data, don’t give it to ANYONE. “Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.”
IIRC am pretty sure they have been doing this for years(since Windows 8).
Expect nothing else from any corporation for your own safety.
BitLocker? More like ShitLocker.
A single bitter, crowing “hah!” at whoever thought there wasn’t at least this much overlap between our corporate and government masters. Welcome to hell kid, shoutout to whatever’s being trained on the last ~30 years of everything that touched the internet in the NSA’s Utah data center. Rose coloured PRISM though, I dream of the day when someone makes those search tools public and I can reminisce through my preteen MSN Messenger convos
So, this means Microsoft has copies of every single bitlocker key, meaning that a bad actor could obtain them… Thereby making bitlocker less than worthless, it’s an active threat.
MS really speedrunning worst possible software timelineHey copilot, give me the bitlocker key to the nuclear football!
They don’t have a copy of every single Bitlocker key. They do have a copy of your Bitlocker key if you are dumb enough to allow it to sync with your Microsoft account, you know, “for convenience.”
Don’t use a Microsoft account with Windows, even if you are forced to use Windows.
Don’t use
a Microsoft account withWindowsFtfy
Don’t use
aMicrosoftaccount with WindowsFFTFY.
Bethesda anything, Azure, Outlook, GitHub, Visual Studio, Office, Bing, XBox, LinkedIn, SharePoint (so disgusting this is a given), fuck it not even Skype (lmao what year is it?)
Save a copy of your bitlocker keys to a Veracrypt drive with a password no shorter then 15 mixed characters. Then upload that encrypted container to any free service. They wont be able to open it and now you have a remote backup copy.
Why not save a step, fuck bitlocker, and use veracrypt to encrypt your drive in the first place?
Why not save a step and don’t install Windows in the first place.
I employed the super secure expedient of never exporting my keys. I have no idea what they are, I never did, and I never will.
There’s really no irreplaceable data on my Windows machine. If I have to reformat it some day A) that’s no big deal, and B) it’s Windows, what else is new.
To use Windows without a Microsoft account requires tech literacy these days, I thought. I would not be suprised if users didn’t choose to sync with a MS account but it’s doing it anyway, if that’s what MS want.
If you sign in with a Microsoft account at all I don’t believe there’s the capability to opt out.
I only use local accounts. I have never had a Microsoft account. I never will.
You can’t do that anymore, at least not with a normal Windows installation. All of the tricks of forcing it offline, clicking cancel 10 times and jumping up and down don’t work anymore, they’ve disabled them all, the only way to install Windows 11 now (using the normal Microsoft installer) is by linking it to a Microsoft account.
Using Rufus still works. I did it as recently as a couple of days ago.
Sorry, but the argument above was for a regular user, who doesn’t know what Rufus is, who doesn’t know the concept of OS, who simply
knowsthinks the files are saved “on the computer” (while they somehow ended up on OneDrive).
This is not true. There are several tools to create a bootable USB that uses a local account.
They just made it hard for Joe Schmoe to avoid it.
using the normal installer
You can still create a local account by setting the PC up as a “School or Business” PC and then choosing the local account option.
I’m not even sure if you can install without an MS account if you don’t use Rufus anymore. Rufus requires literacy for sure, and even if you can still do it without it is designed to make it impossible to know you can from within the installer itself.
Main issue with Rufus is secure boot unfortunately, otherwise Rufus is easy enough that I gave a couple “click here, then here, then here and here are some screenshots” to a friend they were able to navigate it just fine. At this point I swear Rufus is easier than using the official installer provided Secure Boot is off.
It’s a bit harsh and unfair to say “you are dumb enough to allow it”. Microsoft makes it damn near impossible to avoid this unless you are extremely particular and savvy about it, and never have an off day where you make a mistake while using your PC.
Encryption doesn’t actually complete until you log in with a Microsoft account for Home Edition.
Anyways: Use Veracrypt.
Or just Linux + LUKS
They do have a copy of your Bitlocker key if you are dumb enough to allow it to sync with your Microsoft account, you know, “for convenience.”
Which I don’t believe is the only way it can leak. It’s well known Microsoft can access anything and everything on an internet connected Windows PC whether there’s a Microsoft account or not. If the nazi’s push for the device of someone on a local account only, you know they’ll magically find a way.
No they do not have copies of every Bitlocker key.
Bitlocker by default creates a 48-bit recovery code that can be used to unlock an encrypted drive. If you run Windows with a personal Microsoft account it offers to backup that code into your Microsoft account in case your system needs recovered. The FBI submitted a supoena to request the code for a person’s encrypted drive. Microsoft provided it, as required by law.
Bitlocker does not require that key be created, and you don’t have to save it to Microsoft’s cloud.
This is just a case of people not knowing how things work and getting surprised when the data they save in someone else’s computer is accessed using the legal processes.
If you sign into a Microsoft account during setup, Microsoft automatically turns on bitlocker and sends the key off to Microsoft for safe keeping. You are right, there are other ways to handle bitlocker, but that’s way beyond most people, and I don’t think Microsoft even tells you this during setup. It’s honestly a lifesaver for when bitlocker breaks(and it does), but it comes at a cost. In the business world, this is seen as a huge benefit, as we aren’t trying to protect from the US government, mostly petty theft and maybe some corporate espionage.
As is often the case, the real solution is Linux, but that, too, is far beyond most people until manufacturers start shipping Linux machines to big box stores and even then they’d probably not enable any encryption.
I question whether we are rapidly approaching the point where Linux is simply easier to use in a safe, secure, and practical way for the average user, because it doesn’t try to actively fuck you over like Microsoft does
It’s easier when you don’t need to jump through hoops to make a local account. It’s easier when you don’t need to turn off a dozen settings you might not know about regarding data collection or advertisements. It’s easier when you don’t have an antagonistic system that treats you like the product, not a user, not pushing you towards confusing things you don’t want
Except that Microsoft basically puts a gun to every users head to login with a Microsoft account which can/does backup the recovery keys.
Rufus: “Am I a joke to you?”
This is why we Jason Bourne style snatch the gun out of their holster before they can draw it and beat them unconcious with it, I mean oobe\bypassnro
Iirc bypassnro no longer works on recent builds of windows
It no longer works as a shortcut, but the actual bypass still works. In practice the command line you have to enter just got a bit longer is all.
At least last time I needed it, to that still worked fine. It’s been a few months.
Microsoft is already a bad actor and they have them. Or a bad actor could threaten microsoft physically and microsoft will hand them over. Wait, that already happened.
More likely stupid users storing their bitlocker key in the microsoft account instead of printing it out or storing it somewhere not owned by MS lol
And people make fun of me for turning off secure boot and tpm. They just cause grief for no benefit.
Well this isn’t directly related to those, so maybe some derision is warranted.
As long as you’re doing your own whole disk encryption, you have a valid path to still be secure. However, if you’re running an unencrypted disk, you’re much more likely to lose your data to a non-state actor.
Could be worse. Could have skeleton keys
You’re assuming there isn’t a master pubkey baked into the software.
bonjour!
Linux. LUKS it yourself or it isn’t really encrypted.
Even if you don’t care that MS and the federal government can decrypt your data, when Bitlocker is enabled your MS account becomes cryptographically linked to your identity and machine, making it a powerful tool for surveillance, identification, and DRM.
Microslop is openly anti consumer. Why would you hand them your encryption keys?
BitLocker provides for a recovery key. This is to allow someone to regain access to an encrypted device in the event that they lose their PIN, any one of these scenarios happen, OR when suspects do not want to cooperate with LEOs.
Find your BitLocker recovery key
If the target device is part of an enterprise and managed with EntraId/Intune this is the option. Escrowed keys.
Remember when Truecrypt got suspiciously terminated? That was the goal
I wonder if it’s actually safe or if it’s just a CIA honeypot.
They’ve fixed Truecrypt vulnerabilities uncovered by previous audits, and have themselves been audited at least twice
Edit: some highlights on the latest audits and their response.
This is why I don’t use bit locker, nothing microslop controls secure in any way.
Sooo… Is there an alternative to be secure other than switching to another OS? Not that I’m doing anything interesting but I would like to have at least a bit of privacy.
Veracrypt + LTSC
Yeah, just don’t enable key upload and this can’t happen. Don’t link your account either if you want to be more sure.
If your account has already been linked, unlink it and change the bitlocker keys, both regular and recovery. (Easiest way is to entirely decrypt and reencrypt the drive.)
Home edition has this “please sign in to microsoft account to ‘finish encryption’” text with a exclamation mark which implies the key is available on the drive unencrypted if you don’t sign in, meaning anyone could just access your drive with physical access.
There is no “turning off” the key upload, once you sign in, the upload happens immediately, you can “delete” it later, but like nobody really knows if they ever delete it once they have it.
I doubt that that’s actually required to finish encryption.
