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I lost 3 years of work and my research dissertation because of bitlocker. Fuck you microslop, now I do everything on Linux because of your security garbage
Not to be that guy, but that's 100% on you for not having backups of important work. It's 3 years and your fucking research dissertation, how the fuck do you keep that all in one place?
This time you got fucked by Microsoft for having shit software. But it could have been your hardware that exploded, your house catching fire, your shit being stolen, you downloading malware from that one site you told your girlfriend you'd never visit again, shitty infrastructure causing power issues or flooding, you yourself having a nervous breakdown and nuking the thing.
Keep everything important at least in three places, one of which should be in a physically different (remote) place. Backup often, keep to the schedule and test your backups.
Jeez man, using Microsoft software and not having backups is like walking around with a loaded gun pointed at your dick. It's all well and good till you get your dick blown off.
In the immortal words of Daniel Rutter (again): If nothing else, backups are necessary because at some point in your life you will confidently instruct your computer to destroy your data.
i just deleted a month of notes by doing:
find $(pwd) "*.tmp" -delete
instead of:
find $(pwd) -iname "*.tmp" -delete
turns out the former throws an error on "*.tmp" but still deletes everything lol... PSA for everyone
"If it only exists on your laptop, it doesn't exist"
I to have multi tiered backups for my laptops and do regular restores to validate them. Same for my parents and all my non technical family and friends. Its amazing that big companies mess this up since everyone does it. It's just so cheap and easy to do. /s
- Find online backup service
- Pay for subscription
- Install backup software
- ...
- Still have your data
I use Backblaze myself... But there are many other straightforward and easy backup solutions out there.
I mean, the concept behind BitLocker is fine. Encrypting drives by default should be the norm, the same way we encrypt our web traffic by default with https. The issue is Microsoft’s awful implementation that has led lots of users to accidentally lock themselves out of their own data, without even realizing what they were doing.
From their blog:
Now regarding YellowKey, lots of you are wondering how does one even find such backdoor ?
I'll tell you how, it took me more time trying to get it to work than the amount of sleep I had in two years combined. No AI involved, no help in any shape or form. I could have made some insane cash selling this but no amount of money will stand between me and my determination against Microsoft.
[...]
I can't wait when I will be allowed to disclose the full story, I think people will find my crashout very reasonable and it definitely won't be a good look for Microsoft.
Looking forward to the full story.
I could have made some insane cash selling this but no amount of money will stand between me and my determination against Microsoft.
There is no better motivator than pure anger and spite.
I would bet it coincides with them implementing "AI" or shortly after. They're going to say they didn't know, it's not their fault because Slopbot9000 did it.
YellowKey can be triggered simply by merely copying some files to a USB stick and rebooting to the Windows Recovery Environment. We tested this ourselves, and sure enough, not only does it work, it bears all the hallmarks of a backdoor, down to the exploit's files disappearing from the USB stick after it's used once.
100% certainty of backdoor. Is bitlocker developed outside of MSFT? Would seem to need MSFT cooperation to implement.
Bitlocker was developed entirely inside MSFT. Upon further review, there is a chance that this is all somewhat normal behaviour. Part of MSFT safeOS to make it convenient to recover bitlocker access, and update windows.
They also state the vulnerability is well-hidden, and that they "could have made some insane cash selling this, but no amount of money will stand between me and my determination against Microsoft."
based.
Well, Microsoft "Security" hard at work.
Easy to fix with some more vibe coding, I'm sure
You’d think this would only be the 100th-or-so embarrassing security-defying bug to plague micro$oft but you’d be wrong.
It’s like we’re in a world where most people use windows to log on to facebook. Its bizarre.
Backdoors are features, not bugs though.


The process is dead simple: grab any USB stick, get write access to the "System Volume Information," and copy into it the "FsTx" folder and its contents. Shift+click Restart to get Windows to the recovery environment, but then switch to holding down the Control key and don't let go. The machine will reboot, and without asking any questions or showing any menus, will drop you in an elevated command line with full access to the formerly Bitlocked drive, without asking for any keys.
~~Its dead simple to get write access to System Volume Information~~
~~Not even local admins have access to it. A local admin would have to take ownership of that folder (not recommended), but if a local admin is doing that for this exploit, they can just turn off Bitlocker rather than go through this nonsense.~~
I misunderstood the exploit. See replies.
By exploit standards, that's not especially hard. I don't think there's really anything blocking accessing it at all if an NTFS volume is mounted on a typical desktop Linux distro, as it's just NTFS permissions blocking it, and they're not typically obeyed by Linux in the first place.
In the face of your edit, I see that you've misunderstood the exploit. You need write access to the System Volume Information directory of your own USB stick, not anything on the target machine. It's much easier to get access to things on a computer than it is to get access on one particular computer, and this exploit lets you jump from one to the other.
That makes me think of when TrueCrypt suddenly stopped being developed: https://www.techmonitor.ai/technology/cybersecurity/is-truecrypt-a-victim-of-hacking-4280447?cf-view
Except Microsoft doesn't have the respectability to discontinue a clearly broken product now that they've baked it into ever installaion of Windows 11 by default
As in you think they were pressured into stopping development so people would switch over to BitLocker, which now appears to have a backdoor put in by Microsoft or at least one of the developers, presumably at the behest of a government?
there's a backdoor built right into bitlocker in the form of 'recovery keys'--and for most users, microsoft knows what they are.
and for most users, microsoft knows what they are.
This is notable specifically because Microsoft has been compelled by courts to turn over those keys before.
I don’t blame Microsoft for complying with legal court orders, but I 100% blame them for building systems that allow them to access users’ data (including the keys) in the first place. If they used proper E2EE, they wouldn’t be able to access your keys at all. But that would prevent them from gobbling up all of your private data to sell. And the fifth amendment doesn’t protect third parties. So if the FBI confiscates your PC and you clam up, the feds can just compel Microsoft to give them your keys instead.
Yeah its Not Safe As.
Also your delivery from Flowers By Irene is waiting outside