Microsoft Has Your Encryption Key If You Use Windows 10 (theintercept.com)

An anonymous reader writes with this bit of news from the Intercept. If you login to Windows 10 using your Microsoft account, your computer automatically uploads a copy of your recovery key to a Microsoft servers. From the article: "The fact that new Windows devices require users to backup their recovery key on Microsoft's servers is remarkably similar to a key escrow system, but with an important difference. Users can choose to delete recovery keys from their Microsoft accounts – something that people never had the option to do with the Clipper chip system. But they can only delete it after they've already uploaded it to the cloud.....As soon as your recovery key leaves your computer, you have no way of knowing its fate. A hacker could have already hacked your Microsoft account and can make a copy of your recovery key before you have time to delete it. Or Microsoft itself could get hacked, or could have hired a rogue employee with access to user data. Or a law enforcement or spy agency could send Microsoft a request for all data in your account, which would legally compel them to hand over your recovery key, which they could do even if the first thing you do after setting up your computer is delete it. As Matthew Green, professor of cryptography at Johns Hopkins University puts it, 'Your computer is now only as secure as that database of keys held by Microsoft, which means it may be vulnerable to hackers, foreign governments, and people who can extort Microsoft employees.'"

Comments

Re:Hmmmm

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

I use my non-work PC to play games. I'm not going to limit myself to only the games that will run by one manner of hackery or another on Linux. I'm not going to "hold out" and "show publishers that they should port to Linux" because the only one that loses out there is ME. I don't get to engage in one of my primary forms of enjoyment, and the publishers that aren't already at least SteamOS friendly, will NEVER come around.

I use Linux for work. Nothing more.

You're a sucker if you have Windows 10

[kheldan]

Plain and simple. You may as well be parading around in public wearing a T-shirt with all your most private information printed on it front and back, along with a link to a filesharing service download for all your other data. Given the choice between Windows 10 and no computer at all, I'd rather have no computer.