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All Things Microsoft => Microsoft as a Company => Topic started by: RaZoR1394 on 16 February 2006, 10:40

Title: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: RaZoR1394 on 16 February 2006, 10:40

UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows

 

Quote

[0]REBloomfield writes "The BBC is reporting that the British Government
is working with Microsoft in order to [1]gain backdoor access to hard
drives encrypted by the forthcoming Windows Vista file system. Professor
Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University,
urged the Government to contact Microsoft over fears that evidence could
be lost by suspects claiming to have forgotten their encryption key."

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/15/131222

Heh. Sounds scary.

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: Dark_Me on 16 February 2006, 10:44

Is this even legal? Jones?

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: Refalm on 16 February 2006, 10:45

FBI had a backdoor in Windows 98.

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: Jack2000 on 16 February 2006, 15:34

Get the HDD get a blowtorch
... torch the HDD problem solved :D

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: Aloone_Jonez on 16 February 2006, 16:21

Quote from: Refalm

FBI had a backdoor in Windows 98.

Yes, I think it was press F8 when it said "Starting Windows 98. . ."
 :D

Seriously, I can't remember Windows 98 having encryption - the shitty old FAT32 filesystem didn't support it.

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: Jack2000 on 16 February 2006, 19:29

i know a very powerful encryption :)
when the data is transfered in binary 1/0
just have a gadget to make every 1 into 0 and the other way around:)
it will give a hell of a pain to some one else to read the hdd :P

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: piratePenguin on 16 February 2006, 19:39

If MS were working for the consumer they should stop the backdoor with their anti-spyware products.
But yea it won't ever happen.

I wonder could anyone else make use of the backdoor?

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: Aloone_Jonez on 16 February 2006, 20:28

Quote from: Jack2000

i know a very powerful encryption :)
when the data is transfered in binary 1/0
just have a gadget to make every 1 into 0 and the other way around:)
it will give a hell of a pain to some one else to read the hdd :P

So you mean just applying the NOT logical operator to every byte of data on the disk? That's a peice of piss to crack.

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: worker201 on 16 February 2006, 21:13

No need for the Brits to work with Microsoft to decrypt - just wait four days after the official release of Vista - someone will have figured it out by then, for free.

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: H_TeXMeX_H on 16 February 2006, 21:16

Quote from: Refalm

FBI had a backdoor in Windows 98.

If you want my opinion I think the FBI and CIA have a backdoor in every Window$ version ... why would they decide to take the backdoor out of Window$ after 98 ?

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: worker201 on 16 February 2006, 21:46

[OFFTOPIC]If even 1/8 of the things we all hear about the CIA and FBI are true, then those are some seriously fucked up organizations, and allowing them to continue operating is a moral oversight on our part.[/OFFTOPIC]

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: H_TeXMeX_H on 16 February 2006, 22:03

If only people woke up ... I hate to just say things without acting, but really there's not much one can do. Who cares about protestors ... not the government, and if no one sees them protest then there is no use. The system is an overwhelming force ... as I think about what you can do to change it in some small way, to push it in the right direction, I realise that ...

Quote

Resistence is futile. You will be assimilated.

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: davidnix71 on 17 February 2006, 01:48

Is there any third party encryption software that doesn't have a backdoor? Just use that.

A backdoor implies a universal key or else the keys' reference number must be stored somewhere on the hd so it the key itself can be retrieved from a dll.

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: adiment on 17 February 2006, 12:33

Quote from: Refalm

FBI had a backdoor in Windows 98.

That must have sucked for them, but hey at least it wasn't Windows ME. :nothappy:

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: Calum on 17 February 2006, 21:00

i used to have a job where we supported PCs with windows on to users in a firm with something like 17000 employees. part of the standard image which everybody gets on their PC is a certain commercial encryption product. it encrypts your hard drive and then the user sets the key to get into the hard drive, and without that key nobody can get onto your hard drive, let alone log in as you, theoretically. in actual fact the encryption product has a backdoor key. i know what it is, and so do other people. the fact that i no longer work there doesn't stop me knowing the backdoor key, although i have agreed on paper somewhere not to disclose it. to me, this is pathetic! it defeats the entire purpose of encryption. it would be like having two doors in your house. on one, you install a shitload of locks, alarm devices, bolts, reinforcements and so on, to stop anybody trying to break in, but with the other door you don't bother, reasoning that anybody coming to your house will be trying to come in through the front door. In reality then, all the potential invader needs to do to get in through the back door is figure out how to get over your garden fence.

metaphorically speaking.

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: H_TeXMeX_H on 17 February 2006, 21:03

Maybe if you find some open-source encryption software it will probably not have a back door ... or you can check the code yourself and see

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: Aloone_Jonez on 18 February 2006, 02:23

It is possible to encrypt something without having a backdoor, in fact it's reasonably simple,

I don't know why companies just don't do it. I made a very simple encryption program in QBasic once,it just asked for a password and added each letter in the pass word togeather, then made a hash key by setting the random number seed to that value then adding each byte of the file to the next random number plus a byte value of a charicter in the password (a different one each time). Bingo the file just looks like random data and there's no way of decrypting it without the password and I'm no genius.

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: MacX on 18 February 2006, 20:05

uk could just use windows and find their own backdoors... just use it and ull see whole thing is a backdoor :O

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: Pathos on 19 February 2006, 09:22

If there is a backdoor then anyone can crack it...

it may be difficult but its always possible.

If a large business wants to get data out of a hard drive there will probably be a company in china or india in a couple of months that will do it for them for a respectable fee :/

if a business wants encryption they want secure encryption not encryption from people who aren't friends of microsoft...

who would trust microsoft not to put a back door in anyway?

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: Jack2000 on 19 February 2006, 14:01

:] yup
design your own open source fire wall :D
make a telnet
listening port to listen for a password
and only when one is present then out side connections are allowed :)
else only you can control it :D

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: RaZoR1394 on 5 March 2006, 12:31

Quote from: "Slashdot"

         No Backdoor in Vista


          mytrip (http://www.politicianssuck.com/) wrote to mention a C|Net article stating that Vista will not have a security backdoor (http://news.com.com/Microsoft+Vista+wont+get+a+backdoor/2100-1016_3-6046016.html?tag=nefd.top) after all. From the article: "'The suggestion is that we are working with governments to create a back door so that they can always access BitLocker-encrypted data,' Niels Ferguson, a developer and cryptographer at Microsoft, wrote Thursday on a corporate blog. 'Over my dead body,' he wrote in his post titled Back-door nonsense."

LINK (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/04/0652226)
[/i]       

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: Lead Head on 5 March 2006, 15:25

Thank you for that information.:)

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: Aloone_Jonez on 5 March 2006, 17:06

I should bloodywell think so - a back door would've been a stupid idea.

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: Orethrius on 5 March 2006, 22:08

Yes, nobody would EVER expect Microsoft to deny such a deplorable practice (http://www.iol.ie/%7Ekooltek/nsabackdoor.html).
Then again, there's something to be said for "plausible deniability."

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: H_TeXMeX_H on 5 March 2006, 22:41

Man, that guy Niels Ferguson's got guts ... Over my dead body ... he better watch out that Ballmer doesn't Fucking Kill

Title: Re: UK Government Wants a Backdoor Into Windows
Post by: inane on 6 March 2006, 09:56

The only reason I run 2k is for games and the day game companies stop supporting DX9 is the day I stop buying new games... the ones I have will keep me busy for the better part of five years until PSxx comes out. That means I'm NEVER using Vista, so I couldn't give a shit less about their file system or it's encryption.

Besides, I don't use any illegal software and I don't have any sensitive documents stored in my Windows partitions. :thumbup: