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Stealing everything you’ve ever typed or viewed on your own Windows PC is now possible with two lines of code — inside the Copilot+ Recall disaster.

Q. Is this really as harmful as you think?

A. Go to your parents house, your grandparents house etc and look at their Windows PC, look at the installed software in the past year, and try to use the device. Run some antivirus scans. There’s no way this implementation doesn’t end in tears — there’s a reason there’s a trillion dollar security industry, and that most problems revolve around malware and endpoints.

TheTimeKnife ,
@TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world avatar

We should have let the government actually break up microsofts monopoly long ago. Now they will abuse it to force millions of Americans to use their spyware.

retrospectology ,
@retrospectology@lemmy.world avatar

Does anyone yet know how to break stuff like Copilot?

I don’t have Win11, but I also never really trust that MS won’t surreptiously push this kind of thing in the background to legacy systems, and I don’t trust UI toggles within Windows to actually do anything.

Do we know if there are services or files that Co-pilot needs to function?

CileTheSane ,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

Do we know if there are services or files that Co-pilot needs to function?

Co-pilot requires windows. I’m going to try Linux Mint and see how that goes.

A_Random_Idiot ,

I cant believe they are including this in enterprise edition too.

They usually keep their dirty spyware out of the enterprise editions to avoid losing corporate clients who dont want their secrets easily pluckable.

andrade ,

Maybe in the future it can be used by managers to keep an eye on what their underlings are doing at all times. I suggest calling the manager’s remote version Microsoft Panopticon.

ezterry ,

Ask yourself what this feature is actually useful for. Ignore the concerns of privacy just what can this really do.

Its not really needed for copilot, if it wanted to capture what you were doing it would directly update the internal model, no reason for the slide show of your action.

No besides wasteing disk space this is for:

  1. Gaming youtubers to get a screen shot of something when they were not recording
  2. Some screen shots of history when searching not better than the file/website preview really
  3. Tracking and logging what the end user is doing so when audited by the manager/it they can use it as proof you are not doing it right/are inefficient /should ve fired

By all means a company can disable this in policy im sure, but its for the enterprise not the end user. (and yes stored locally, but if you delete the laptop when they want to inspect it that likely is all the excuse they need)

tidaL ,

Benefit to my org is getting billers to look for untracked time, which would equate to some percentages of revenue increase in my opinion.

Just need to balance it with security concerns…

ezterry ,

enable for roles with more locked down PCs and tasks the companies hope to automate, and disable on more core mission critical IT…

sebinspace ,

My hospital will be freaking the fuck out about this right… about…. Now.

Cognitive_Dissident ,

Your hospital likely won’t allow it because of HIPAA laws.

sebinspace ,

They may not have a choice, depends on how aggressively they want to push this crap.

Cognitive_Dissident ,

At least in the Enterprise versions, companies will have the option to exclude it from their installations – if they want.

RoyalEngineering ,

I keep hearing all the rabble rousing about this from a security perspective, but is there not an incognito mode to the Recall capability?

A_Random_Idiot ,

There cant be.

It literally screenshots what you’re doing every few seconds, and builds a plain text database of any and all text it captures.

Incognito mode is not having it installed.

RoyalEngineering ,

Hmm that didn’t sound right so I had to look it up. Microsoft says there’s a way to pause the recall snapshot functionality for a set amount of time, like an incognito mode:

Pause or resume snapshots To pause recall, select the Recall icon in the system tray then Pause until tomorrow. Snapshots will be paused until they automatically resume at 12:00 AM. When snapshots are paused, the Recall system tray icon has a slash through it so you can easily tell if snapshots are enabled. To manually resume snapshots, select the Recall icon in the system tray and then select Resume snapshots.

…microsoft.com/…/retrace-your-steps-with-recall-a…

I don’t understand why there’s so much FUD around this product…

ltxrtquq ,

You don’t understand why there’s so much fear, uncertainty, and doubt about an on-by-default program that records everything you do? Are you being serious right now?

lemonmelon ,

I find it hard to take seriously anyone who throws the term FUD around with no sense of irony.

RoyalEngineering ,

Yeah not to be obtuse here, but I think the fear is over sensationalized. I haven’t seen it in person, but it seems like this is a totally new product that is similar to idea of browser history, but adds in some modern features. I would like to check it out.

on-by-default

That’s not correct. Based on the documentation, Windows Setup has an option to enable/disable the feature on first boot.

The documentation also says it doesn’t capture incognito windows and I mentioned in my other comment that you can turn it off temporarily and permanently. It doesn’t run all the time no matter what, like some of the comments have suggested.

Here’s a screenshot of the config page with a simple toggle to turn off: https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/fc891640-ce5a-404e-b104-3ef70bc04b12.jpeg

ltxrtquq ,

Windows 11’s Recall feature is on by default on Copilot+ PCs

Disabling the AI snapshotter requires a trip into Settings for ordinary users

Over the weekend, The Verge’s Tom Warren posted (on twitter) screenshots showing Microsoft’s latest Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE), in which the Recall feature can’t be turned off unless the user opens Settings after completing setup.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GO8XHj3WcAAy-2Y?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

Now, it’s possible things have changed in the last few days, but I wouldn’t really expect them to based on the last time I used windows. I also didn’t know this before I tried looking it up, so I’ll admit I’m a little biased against microsoft.

But the real question is, what documentation are you looking at where you’re pulling all this information from? Can you provide a link?

DarkSurferZA ,

I get the security issues, sure, those are valid, but the privacy ones are even worse. Imagine a teenager trying to search information on being gay, or possible intrusive thoughts on their family computer, only for their super maga right wing parent to find it in the screenshots.

Or someone being abused at home and searching for support facilities, deleting history and being outed by recall.

Wait, how about credit card fraud as a result of EVERYONE who has access to this computer can read your cc data?

Or, my husband was looking at jewelry online yesterday and he hasn’t told me, he must be cheating, right? Oh sorry, I forgot, our anniversary is next week… Hahahaha, don’t be upset babe.

Best one ever though, imagine your search history, your porn watch history accessible to anyone with access to your computer? The fucking horrific existence of having an employer process this data at scale using fancy staff monitoring program 7, and run stats on the fact that you had a toilet break while working from home, and they want to know if it was a number 1, or a number 2 so they can work a mean time to shit metric into your KPA/scorecard.

Guys, whatever benefit you think this is. It’s not worth it.

uhN0id ,

Ultimately privacy is part of security so, if anything, everything you mentioned is just more reinforcements that this is a major security concern.

As someone that has been obsessed with tech since being a kid in the 90s I think the tech side of this is super cool and very exciting stuff. As a user, though, I only like this if I’m the one implementing and using it. I do not trust a mega corporation (or really any company) to “leave it locally on my computer and totally not use that data for other purposes”. Right now it’s supposed to be (as far as I last heard) only on your machine but we’ve seen EULAs and TOS’ etc change many times over the years but especially over more recent years as data continues to be king and data like this is a literal bottomless diamond mine.

I know this isn’t your point but it’s just worries I have in addition to your points. And let’s not even start about what this means for law enforcement abuse. No thanks, I’ll wait for a FOSS equivalent that at least gives me and the community the opportunity to evaluate how it works.

ArcaneSlime , (edited )

Not that it solves the problem, but since I’m not the King of M$ this is about all I can do: you could easily get around all that by turning off secure boot and booting into a persistant live-usb containing a linux distro of your choice (Tails for extra privacy/ease, if you can use Tor) to do all your secret agent computing needs. The host PC can’t see shit of what happens on Tails.

Edit: lol you downvoted me because I can’t singularly change an entire corporation’s mind and instead offer workable solutions that you could make within the next 30 minutes to mitigate the problem until such time as your plan for Microsoft domination comes to fruition and you can change it back?

Ok I guess, “chump don’t want no help, chump don’t get no help. Jive ass fools ain’t got no brains, anyhow.”

-Barbara Billingsly

Churbleyimyam ,

Even supposing I didn’t care about the security implications of this, why on earth would I want this functionality? I can barely keep up with all my activities in the present moment, let alone the past. It’s like a morbid and pathological unification of nostalgia and hoarding.

beefbot ,

THIS IS NOT CURRENTLY RUNNING ON MY WINDOWS COMPUTER, right?

This obvious first question hasn’t been clarified (maybe by one comment in this thread, but not in the article)

OsrsNeedsF2P , (edited )

You’ll have the icon on your taskbar if it is. You can also hit Meta+J to check

beefbot ,

deleted_by_author

    •
    MacNCheezus , (edited )
    @MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

    I think that’s just regular Copilot (without the plus). This is a newer version, at least that’s what this quote from the article leads me to believe:

    I got ahold [sic] of the Copilot+ software and got it working on a system without an NPU about a week ago

    The regular Copilot (without the plus) that sits in the taskbar was rolled out in an update about a month or two ago.

    Also, this part of the article gives a method to check if it’s running:

    Q. How do you obtain the database files?

    A. They’re just files in AppData, in the new CoreAIPlatform folder.

    Unfortunately there are at least two AppData folders (three to be exact, but one of them is rarely used), and it doesn’t specify whether it’s %APPDATA% or %LOCALAPPDATA%, but I just checked on my Windows machine (Win11 with all updates installed, including Copilot), and I can find no such folder in either of these paths.

    EDIT: the video in this toot clearly shows the location of the database folder, and it’s in %LOCALAPPDATA%, which makes sense given that it’s stuff that’s not supposed to leave your device.

    EDIT2: this tweet seems to confirm that this is indeed a feature that’s only shipped on certain new devices, which need to be specially certified because Copilot+ requires hardware support.

    beefbot ,

    From The Verge’s obsequious article:

    Recall won’t work with every Windows 11 computer. You’ll have to buy one of several fresh new “Copilot Plus PCs” powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X Elite chips, which have the neural processing unit (NPU) required for Recall to work.

    asap ,
    @asap@lemmy.world avatar

    And from the article in the OP:

    I got ahold of the Copilot+ software and got it working on a system without an NPU about a week ago,

    andros_rex ,

    What even is a NPU, if it’s not necessary for the software to work?

    zod000 ,

    Most of the newer CPU’s have an NPU already, Microsoft just set a higher performance requirement for NPUs to be officially labeled an “AI PC” which they are pushing hard.

    A_Random_Idiot ,

    They are using that to sell NPU bullshit to the stupid people crazy enough to be excited by it.

    Then down the road they’ll push it in an update for everyone, I wager.

    suction ,

    Couldn’t you use a separator to make it one line of code? That way it’d be even more dangerous

    Dicska ,

    Are you… Are you saying EVERYTHING can be hacked with one line of code?

    suction ,

    Ever since those Aliens brought us their ancient and mysterious line separator tech, we have all we need to do just that!

    Dicska ,

    Independence day was indeed a great movie. Who would have thought they also use X86 architecture?

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    I did an interview where the candidate said that if it’s one line, it runs in constant time. And they were completely serious. And this was in the context of Python list comprehensions.

    They claimed this ran in constant time:

    
<span style="color:#323232;">new_list = [value for value in my_list]
</span>

    Whereas this ran in linear time:

    
<span style="color:#323232;">new_list = []
</span><span style="color:#323232;">for value in my_list:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    new_list.append(value)
</span>

    We asked clarifying questions, like what happens to the runtime if the list gets really large, and they doubled down.

    And this was for a senior Python dev position… No, they didn’t get the job.

    suction ,

    Runs in constant time doesn’t ring a bell to be honest…do you mean instantly?

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    No, constant time means it’ll take the same amount of time whether you have 10 items or 10,000.

    A list comprehension will take roughly the same amount of time as a for loop, it’s just syntactic sugar.

    suction ,

    Thanks!

    Not sure why you needed to downvote my honest question, maybe the candidate dodged a bullet there, he he he.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    I didn’t downvote.

    If this was a junior candidate or something, I may have let it slide. But this was a senior candidate, which means they are supposed to be a technical leader for the team. I can’t have someone in that role with such fundamental misunderstandings. There were more red flags than just that one, I also don’t fail people for one gaff (e.g. I just passed a senior that bombed the coding challenge, but it was obvious they were over-thinking it).

    NoiseColor ,

    This is a feature hundreds of millions of people will use and very likely won’t cause any security issues. These doomsday scenarios every Linux user here is predicting is a bit much, don’t you think so?

    lemmyvore ,

    We’ve seen it before, it’s not idle speculation. Windows machines have been the hosts of the largest botnets in the world. Whenever a company does something stupid like this it invariably gets into the wrong hands. It’s not even a question of if it will happen just when it will happen.

    Oh and it’s not “Linux users” saying it, it’s everybody with an ounce of technical common sense. We’re all here shouting at Microsoft “it’s a bad idea” and they won’t care and it will go exactly as badly as predicted.

    rottingleaf ,

    Oh and it’s not “Linux users” saying it, it’s everybody with an ounce of technical common sense.

    Which kinda correlate with each other. Which allows for a certain bad faith argument to be made.

    NoiseColor ,

    Yes, we have seen it many times before. Much ado about nothing. New feature that will mean some new security measures. Everybody will move on and in a year nobody will remember how some people in the Linux community were panicking.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    I will never find out exactly when your bank data is stolen because of this, so I’m just going to laugh about it now.

    NoiseColor ,

    Go ahead laugh. Because you will indeed forget all about it and never remember your doubts and panic laughter as nothing will happen.

    Nighed ,
    @Nighed@sffa.community avatar

    Oh it WILL cause security issues. It’s just a tradeoff against if they are worth the benefits.

    NoiseColor ,

    There likely won’t be anything major while 1. 4 billion people will benefit. Security measures will be adapted for this new feature.

    This same thing happened before, a lot of panic for nothing.

    Natanael ,

    Define “new security measures”

    NoiseColor ,

    I don’t know. We will both be able to discover them when the features are deployed.

    This is a senseless hysteria about how this is horrible and… I don’t even want to go into all the dumb shit I read.

    higgsboson ,

    very likely won’t cause any security issues.

    Hahahahaha. Oh wait, you’re serious? Let me laugh even harder. HAHAHA

    NoiseColor ,

    You are the clown with a sign: the end is nigh. You are being naive.

    ripcord ,
    @ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

    You’re being exceptionally - and genuinely stupidly - naiive.

    NoiseColor ,

    Sure. Why not. These hysterical people here panicking are the chosen ones that know and understand everything.

    Adanisi ,
    @Adanisi@lemmy.zip avatar

    Are you braindead? Yes yes taking regular screenshots of the desktop can’t possibly be a security risk, right?

    NoiseColor ,

    You can define almost anything as a security risk. But we aren’t children to play such stupid games.

    We are talking about someone gaining that information and the probability of that happening without even knowing what security mesaures will be in place. I think the risk is negligible even today with the limited information about it that we have now. Other People here, presumably you as well are hysterical about it.

    Thats what the discussion is. You actually believe Microsoft will launch this and then everybody will be hacked or something. I think that is… not smart.

    Adanisi ,
    @Adanisi@lemmy.zip avatar

    No, I don’t think “everyone will get hacked or something”, don’t put words in my. I mouth for the sake of your argument.

    What it is, and this is undeniable, is a massive fucking privacy and security hole if someone gains control of your computer.

    NoiseColor ,

    I didn’t want to put words in your mouth, but wanted to clear up where each of us stand so there is no missunderstanding.

    If somebody gains control of your computer today, that’s a massive privacy and security hole in itself.

    Adanisi ,
    @Adanisi@lemmy.zip avatar

    Absolutely, but even with control of your computer, if you’re smart, other accounts etc will still be inaccessible by the attacker.

    Not when they get access to the Windows built in desktop spy saving everything it sees.

    NoiseColor ,

    Not if it’s encrypted and if sensitive information is not saved.

    Main point is still that gaining control of someone’s computer against their will is practically impossible today. If someone manages to do it, they already have your files and all the sensitive information they could want. They won’t even bother with this recall. And if you are worried about it, you will be able to just turn it off.

    Much ado about nothing.

    Adanisi ,
    @Adanisi@lemmy.zip avatar

    “If sensitive information is not saved” is doing a lot of heavy lifting for you there. The issue is that it saves everything.

    NoiseColor ,

    But it doesn’t save completely everything. It does snapshots as far as I understand. So it’s unlikely a whole password would be there on a snapshot. And again, it had to be mentioned that anything can be excluded from recall or disabled completely.

    At this point it has to be again highlighted that gaining access to a computer is very hard and that in itself is game over scenario. More information can be gained from a keylogger than this recall feature.

    Moorshou ,

    Eric Parkers video Recall

    Spotlight7573 ,

    A keylogger isn’t retroactive to before the keylogger was installed though. Recall is. Also, with Recall you don’t need to write keylogging software and get it past antimalware scans (and keep it from getting detected), you just have to get an infostealer past them one single time to take the Recall database.

    NoiseColor ,

    It’s very unlikely you could get the password from recall

    Spotlight7573 ,

    The video posted by Moorshou literally shows someone getting a password and a credit card number from it. Yes, the password was due to someone clicking the show password button momentarily but do we just never expect people to use those or to not use a password manager that would show the password on screen at some point? Due to it doing text recognition, you would literally be able to just search for “credit card” to find all the times when it was displaying a credit card field on a checkout page or “password” to find all the times someone is logging in or using their password manager. And that’s using the built in search, not even exfiltrating the data and processing it with more specialized tools.

    You really need to watch that video to see what it can do and how easily it can do it.

    NoiseColor ,

    So even if it does ship like this guy thinks it will, it will take someone gaining control of the computer and having the victim click show password at the wrong time.

    The end is nigh.

    Adanisi , (edited )
    @Adanisi@lemmy.zip avatar

    github.com/xaitax/TotalRecall

    User python script. Full control of computer not required.

    NoiseColor ,

    And how does the python script run itself?

    Adanisi , (edited )
    @Adanisi@lemmy.zip avatar

    How does any virus run itself? Are you seriously this dense?

    Hint: there are many attack vectors, including no-click drive-by downloads, programs from Softonic, etc.

    EDIT: Does this person seriously believe that because Microsoft made it, it must be secure, despite that literally having just been proven wrong? And that pointing that out means I need to be smarter than everyone at MS? That explains the delusional argument they’re going with.

    NoiseColor ,

    Damn you are so stupid. But it’s normal for stupid people to think they are smart.

    Smarter guy here on lemmy calling other people names than all the people at Microsoft.

    I’m done here. Bye.

    Adanisi ,
    @Adanisi@lemmy.zip avatar

    ??? It saves everything it sees that’s the point ???

    NoiseColor ,

    Not the same as a snapshot.

    starman2112 ,
    @starman2112@sh.itjust.works avatar

    If you didn’t want to put words in someone’s mouth then you shouldn’t have said something like

    You actually believe Microsoft will launch this and then everybody will be hacked or something.

    NoiseColor ,

    Oh a knight in shining armour trying to defend my dialogue partner?

    Did you ask anyone needed defense? Because I’m pretty sure they don’t.

    If you read carefully I wrote “or something” at the end implying that I don’t know exactly what they believe. It was not that subtle of invitation for them to agree with my first assessment or correct me. I will try to be really blunt in the future, so that you don’t missunderstand again.

    starman2112 ,
    @starman2112@sh.itjust.works avatar

    ? I’m not defending anyone, I’m calling out bullshit when I see it

    I don’t really care that you like watching kids through their bedroom windows or whatever

    If that doesn’t accurately describe your views, no worries—I said “or whatever,” so it’s fine

    NoiseColor ,

    What a dumb and petty response.

    Bye.

    BrowseMan ,

    Did you read the article?

    This system basically do a character recognition on EVERYTHING the user is displaying and save the results in a very small file not that well protected.

    The data is very small (I guess because it’s basically text?), seems easy to find. That means the history of all you did on your computer (apparently only for the last three feays by default,but well…) can be stolen at once, in a minuscule file.

    I’m not an IT specialist, but I don’t see in which world this can remotely be a good idea…

    NoiseColor ,

    As I understand not everything will be read and stored, storage will be encrypted. We don’t even know what exactly will be stored and everybody here is losing their mind.

    We already have a lot of sensitive information on our computers and nobody is panicking.

    I guess it’s hard to get used to new stuff. Or maybe Linux users are afraid that their favourite system won’t be able to compete anymore.

    BrowseMan ,

    Based on what Microsoft themselves said we know: everything will be stored (except edge private session…). They specifically say they don’t do content moderation: they log everything.

    Did you read the article?

    Q. Cool, so hackers and malware can’t access it, right?

    A. No, they can.

    Q. But it’s encrypted.

    A. When you’re logged into a PC and run software, things are decrypted for you. Encryption at rest only helps if somebody comes to your house and physically steals your laptop — that isn’t what criminal hackers do.

    As a windows user I’m not delighted by this.

    Edit: at this point you must be trolling…

    NoiseColor ,

    If you are so afraid, you can just turn it of. You are aware of this are you not?

    OK if you think I’m trolling, why did you answer?

    I give you the benefit of the doubt you are a reasonable person who can go beyond their emotions of a feature of an os. And the emotions this article stirred.

    decivex ,

    Encryption at rest is meaningless if you get infected with spyware.

    ocassionallyaduck ,

    You didn’t read the article.

    We do know the answers to these questions. And if I can use a 2 line script to exfiltrate all your screen data for days/weeks in under a few MB of data.

    So better hope you, never, ever, ever run unauthorized or malicious code, because now it basically has a honeypot of top priority data, always stored in a known location and compressed for easy uploads.

    NoiseColor ,

    What kind of malicious code would be able to do that?

    ArcaneSlime , 
    
<span style="color:#323232;">Q. The data is processed entirely locally on your laptop, right?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A. Yes! They made some smart decisions here, there’s a whole subsystem of Azure AI etc code that process on the edge.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Q. Cool, so hackers and malware can’t access it, right?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A. No, they can.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Q. But it’s encrypted.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A. When you’re logged into a PC and run software, things are decrypted for you. Encryption at rest only helps if somebody comes to your house and physically steals your laptop — that isn’t what criminal hackers do.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">For example, InfoStealer trojans, which automatically steal usernames and passwords, are a major problem for well over a decade — now these can just be easily modified to support Recall.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Q. But the BBC said data cannot be accessed remotely by hackers.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A. They were quoting Microsoft, but this is wrong. Data can be accessed remotely.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Q. Microsoft say only that user can access the data.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A. This isn’t true, I can demonstrate another user account on the same device accessing the database.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Q. So how does it work?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A. Every few seconds, screenshots are taken. These are automatically OCR’d by Azure AI, running on your device, and written into an SQLite database in the user’s folder.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">This database file has a record of everything you’ve ever viewed on your PC in plain text. OCR is a process of looking an image, and extracting the letters.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Q. What does the database look like?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A:https://twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/1796218726808748367?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1796218726808748367%7Ctwgr%5E2eccf634534245a77c4f931d8722f1b8c6f23595%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.embedly.com%2Fwidgets%2Fmedia.html%3Ftype%3Dtext2Fhtmlkey%3Da19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07schema%3Dtwitterurl%3Dhttps3A%2F%2Fx.com%2FGossiTheDog%2Fstatus%2F1796218726808748367image%3D
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Q. How do you obtain the database files?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A. They’re just files in AppData, in the new CoreAIPlatform folder.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Q. But it’s highly encrypted and nobody can access them, right?!
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A. Here’s a few second video of two Microsoft engineers accessing the folder: https://cyberplace.social/system/media_attachments/files/112/535/509/719/447/038/original/7352074f678f6dec.mp4
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Q. …But, normal users don’t run as admins!
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A. According to Microsoft’s own website, in their Recall rollout page, they do: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/0*WGE1jcRzhe6WAGQS
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">In fact, you don’t even need to be an admin to read the database — more on that in a later blog.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Q. But a UAC prompt appeared in that video, that’s a security boundary.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A. According to Microsoft’s own website (and MSRC), UAC is not a security boundary: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*TTjYNH15IoP_d8JhhG3cEA.png
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Q. So… where is the security here?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A. They have tried to do a bunch of things but none of it actually works properly in the real world due to gaps you can drive a plane through.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Q. Does it automatically not screenshot and OCR things like financial information?
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">A. No: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*OZMjujpALL3IfAQYT64x7Q.png
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span>

    Do I have to continue or do you think you could actually read the article for the rest? It’s clearly a bigger deal than “linux users mad because windows better” and your poor excuse for a troll just makes it look like you’re too stupid to read the article laid out in front of you. Well, now you have no excuse so get good.

    NoiseColor , (edited )

    Sorry I don’t take everyones word as truth. This guy is just one guy. One guy against the whole Microsoft corporation whose entire fortune depends on this not to fail in the way he said it certainly will. Absurd.

    ArcaneSlime ,

    Lol you’re hopeless.

    NoiseColor ,

    Lol you believe everything lol.

    ArcaneSlime ,

    Have fun with that.

    NoiseColor ,

    I will, together with 1.4 billion people who will do the same.

    ArcaneSlime ,

    Oooooh scary.

    NoiseColor ,

    I’m not surprised you are scared, considering what puts you into panic.

    ArcaneSlime ,

    Lolololol try harder loser.

    NoiseColor ,

    Bye.

    ArcaneSlime ,

    No u.

    ocassionallyaduck ,

    Then don’t believe one guy, read the other reports on the feature, or the reports from Microsoft’s BUILD conference that confirm these details.

    It’s stored in the appdata folder in plaintext.

    nobleshift ,
    @nobleshift@lemmy.world avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    KeenFlame ,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    olympicyes ,

    The article references family, domestic violence, employers, and fraudsters but doesn’t really focus on legal liability.

    KeenFlame ,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    baru ,

    Before you said that it was specifically addressed. Interesting shift of the goal post.

    GnomeKat ,
    @GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    Can you elaborate on what “subpoenable information” means. Like I have a vague idea but im not super clear if thats like a legal term with special considerations or whatever. Elaboration would be helpful.

    mctoasterson ,

    Not OP but the scenario described is say… A company and a specific manager gets sued for harassment. The plaintiff can be entitled to discovery related to the complaint, and that could now include the searchable screenshot database from the managers computer showing all the clear evidence that he harassed the plaintiff. Nightmare scenario for legal departments of companies.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    On the other hand, this makes it much easier for a corporation to spy on its employees, so I think at least some of them are in favor of this.

    Melt ,

    If employees are using the corporate’s computers, they can already see everything the employees do, they don’t need this new window feature to do it

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    That is by no means necessarily the case. For example, if a notebook is taken into the field and is not on the LAN.

    scops ,

    My work laptop is a brick until it establishes a VPN tunnel back to the home network. There are ways to ensure the device only works how the company wants it to.

    ITGuyLevi ,

    A lot of companies are implementing better VPN tech (like SD-WAN, Nebula by Slack, etc), or at the least Microsoft Intune to ensure your corporate laptop is reachable anytime it’s connected to the internet.

    Miaou ,

    Windows has some kind of built-in VPN feature that auto starts and will otherwise not give you any network access. Add on top of that some corporate firewall and you basically can’t sneeze around your laptop without IT knowing.

    exanime ,

    Hmmmm it depends… Are they going to make more money by spying on employees than they’ll lose in lawsuits?

    I think COVID WFH policies proved the majority of us do not need someone breathing down our necks to perform

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    And yet management is desperate to end WFH policies and has done so in many companies.

    exanime ,

    To justify their own existence

    MacNCheezus ,
    @MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

    It means it’s the kind of stuff that law enforcement would require a warrant in order to obtain.

    dumblederp ,

    If you’re suspected of something and law enforcement can get a subpoena, you’ll have to hand over the contents of your microsoft keylogger, actually microsoft will hand over your contents from their keylogger.

    mctoasterson ,

    No major corp I’m aware of is excited about these changes. Legal especially would like there to be the minimum records retention required by law, and a months long AI searchable database of individual user actions on a PC is a nightmare scenario for them.

    bob_lemon ,

    If the IT departments of any major corp allows anyone within their network to enable this feature, they and everyone the work for need a permanent waning label for idiocy and utter incompetence attached to their resume.

    Miaou ,

    Can I forward your comment to my IT team? Because they’ve done worse than that already :(

    Ozymati ,
    @Ozymati@lemmy.nz avatar

    I don’t know, if I was IT decision-making and I worked for a company I didn’t particularly like I might install this for the executive stratosphere and hope for subpoenas.

    OsrsNeedsF2P ,

    The damage is mitigated by the fact it only recalls last 3 days by default

    deltapi ,

    Forensic data recovery. How many 500GB drives ship to PCs that never use more than 20% of that?

    hemko ,

    “By default” meaning it can be changed.

    Then someone in the company gets their device compromised, and security starts looking what happened on the device that time. “We’d have that data, but it was deleted yesterday because of the retention policy on recall” -answer from that new guy in IT dept. Security then reminds that the company policy requires minimum 30 days retention for all logging of security events.

    deweydecibel , (edited )

    Are Microsoft a big, evil company?

    A. No, that’s insanely reductive. They’re super smart people, and sometimes super smart people make mistakes. What matters is what they do with knowledge of mistakes.

    I have no doubt there are smart employees, but they don’t call the shots. Case in point.

    The dude set up a strawman argument, then didn’t even bother to burn it down properly.

    Karyoplasma ,

    A rotten apple spoils the bunch.

    Grangle1 ,

    Being super smart and super evil are NOT mutually exclusive. Intelligence =|= morality.

    AngryCommieKender ,

    Wasn’t Lex Luthor supposed to be Tony Stark levels of intelligence?

    Hobo , (edited )

    Why reach for a fictional example when so many real world examples exist? Just curious because I think of Bezos, Musk, and to a lesser degree Gates as examples of smart people doing bad things. I mean there’s several very smart people that have done good things as well but those are harder to come by. Even people like Alfred Nobel created something he thought would save the lives of miners only for his invention to be used for war. Einstein also did a lot for the advancement of theoretical physics and his work was subsequently used as the foundation of the atomic bomb. It’s actually way harder to come up with a Tony Stark type smart “good guy” in the real world for me because reality is often far more grey.

    AngryCommieKender ,

    I don’t think of Bezos, Musk, or Gates as exceptionally intelligent. They are lucky and influential, sure. Intelligent? Musk is automatically out just because of his Twitter feed. The other two haven’t shown themselves to be particularly intelligent, just ruthless and efficient when it comes to generating profit.

    As far as the other side of that coin, I tend to agree. Most of the really intelligent people that have existed have been pretty grey morally speaking.

    Hence why I went with fictional examples. At least with Lex Luthor, there’s very little grey area in his moral stances.

    Hobo , (edited )

    Gates is insanely intelligent, like demonstratably so. Musk and Bezos are also very highly intelligent people. Do they have terrible, awful, even downright despicable views? Absolutely. But don’t be fooled, all three of those people are incredibly smart with actual high IQs (not in the braggart, “I have a very high IQ.” sense either).

    Intelligence doesn’t translate to empathy or wisdom. Some of the least book smart people I’ve met have been profoundly wise at times, and some of those same people were incredibly empathetic. Unfortunately, I think all three of those people (Musk, Bezos, and Gates) are lacking in those traits, but saying they aren’t in fact measurably intelligent is only fooling yourself.

    I say this as someone who was raised by a measurably very highly intelligent person who could be, and was, a complete monster at times, and had some really twisted views on the world/other people. Lucky for me I didn’t inherit that innate Intelligence I guess!

    neclimdul ,

    Is musk really intelligent? He’s not dumb but honestly seems like most of his success is from buying things and or getting smart people under him who are able to succeed despite his medlling. The ideas he forces through tend to be bad. Giga factory was largely a disaster and he had to relearn manufacturing. Giga casting? Dead. A lot of the super heavy stuff he’s directly influenced failed or are drawing out the timeline as the struggle to address. Cybertruck and semi…

    g_the_b ,

    Musk and Jobs are/ were highly effective psychopaths. Not geniuses in an academic sense but incredibly shrewd and calculated.

    Gates, Bezos, Zuck, Page and the likes are very intelligent and very confident. Like I wouldn’t be able to one up any of them in a debate, but I wouldn’t be afraid of them trying to destroy my life out of spite.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Hiring smart people and seeing market opportunities and executing on those opportunities absolutely are skills. It’s the same sort of skills Hitler had, where most of the genius lies around organising people around a common goal.

    A lot of companies either get the smart people, time market opportunities perfectly, or execute perfectly on a clear vision, but very few do all three at the same time and tend to fail. The first (lots of smart people) run out of money, the second is the “too early” group and their ideas get taken by someone else, and the third spends their resources going in the wrong direction.

    Elon Musk wasn’t successful because he knows a lot about electric cars or rockets, he was successful because he saw an opportunity, secured enough funding, hired the right people, and focused those people in the right direction.

    You can be incredibly smart in one area and incredibly dumb in others. Elon is great at pitching an idea to get funding, and using that funding to hire the right people. He fails when he overrides those smart people.

    Promethiel ,
    @Promethiel@lemmy.world avatar

    These totally normal human beings you sound like you deify…are you their psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist, counselor? Short of those professions or a former tutor who happened to treat all three…

    Well, interesting thing to devote anecdotal brain power to, I’ll tell you that.

    Hobo , (edited )

    Yeah totally that’s why I said they were basically morally corrupt and used them as an example of smart people doing bad things… Maybe your judgement is a bit clouded?

    LordCrom ,

    As we get older, I tend to agree with the supervillains.

    Lex Luther wants a weapon to counter this insanely strong, invulnerable Superman that can destroy the planet … I’m like: Yes we should

    Magneto considers mutants superior and if humans wage war, then mutants have the right to wage war back, and win. Survival of the fittest. If I was a mutant, I would be on Magnetos team.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Magneto wanted supremacy, not equality, and was willing to use genocide of non-mutants to get it. And Lex Luthor was a narcissist who was jealous of Superman’s power and popularity; he wasn’t acting for the benefit of humanity, he was acting in his own interests.

    Every good villain has mostly justifiable motivations, they just take it too far. Magneto would be justified if he sought equality, and Luthor would be justified if he developed but didn’t use the weapon until Superman did something evil.

    The only justifiable amount of force is just enough to neutralize an active threat, and no more.

    VerticaGG ,

    middleeasteye.net/…/zone-of-interest-oscars-banal…

    On what morality is: This was a quick read about what enables dehumanization and mass atrocity, as relevant to both history and ongoing fascistic settler colonial imperialism.

    praise_idleness ,

    If this is a mistake that they made, they’re not smart. If anything, they super dumb.

    They’re evil.

    HelloHotel ,
    @HelloHotel@lemmy.world avatar

    Microsoft, stop giving me Red Star OS flashbacks. (If im not mistaken, it records your screen and stores it in a police-only folder)

    FrostyCaveman ,

    It’s basically the same shit at this point

    bappity , (edited )
    @bappity@lemmy.world avatar

    thanks Microsoft
    https://media.tenor.com/spSgkqK707kAAAAM/ok-all.gif

    pleasetellmeyoucaninferthesarcasmfromthispost

    MossyFeathers ,

    I’m really hoping valve does a public steamdeck OS release. I’d like to replace windows on my PC with Linux and have windows as a backup, but the Linux distro I’m the most familiar with is the steam deck’s distro, and that’s not available outside of steam decks yet.

    HatFullOfSky ,

    SteamOS is arch based and uses KDE Plasma as the default DE, so you could probably run Endeavour OS and be pretty darn close

    GregorGizeh ,

    Check out bazzite.gg

    It is a very beginner friendly, gaming focused distro that essentially aims to be steamOS on PC. It even has rollback functionality if you accidentally break something.

    billiam0202 ,

    You’re gonna get lots of suggestions, lol.

    I’d say look at Zorin. It’s a Ubuntu-based distro so it has lots of support, and also has several baked-in themes to customize your desktop the way you want it right out of the box. You can make it look like Windows 7/10/11 or macOS without any other apps or themes, which might help your transition.

    ODD ,

    Zorin is excellent!

    foggenbooty ,

    Bazzite has been designed to be an out of the box SteamOS distro. It’s not based on Arch, so if that’s what you’re familiar with then that’s not the same, but give it a try.

    SnotFlickerman ,
    @SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    Unpopular Opinion: This is why Microsoft were such assholes about making sure Windows 11 required a modern TPM and this is also why they are forcefully rolling out Bitlocker encryption turned on by default on all Windows 11 PCs.

    Is Recall still a fucking stupid idea? Yes, resoundingly so. But they’ve half-ass considered the risks, it seems. The forceful rollout of Bitlocker is dumb and short-sighted in its own right, and it wouldn’t make a person completely secure from outside attacks rooted in a Recall exposure.

    boatswain ,

    Hardware controls are meaningless if an attacker gets you to click on a dodgy link in a phishing email or you fall for a social engineering scam when “Microsoft” calls you because your computer has a virus.

    greybeard ,

    Theoretically, Microsoft could protect against most attacks. Apple has done it by making it increasingly impossible to touch kernel level stuff without an MDM. Every release they lock up more of the system. It means they are drifting toward iOS on their Macs, where the user doesn’t own their device, but it is an effective blocker to stuff like this, baring zero day kernel issues.

    I think that is where Microsoft is headed, but they also aren’t able to let go of backward compatibility, so they really aren’t getting any closer to a system that is secured enough to handle such sensitive data.

    fartsparkles ,

    Most compromises live in user space. Locking down the kernel is great and all but “most attacks” are running as the logged in user doing operations that user is permitted to do.

    qprimed ,

    I am shocked there is even a single downvote on this comment. parent is 110% right. a kernel level compromise in the vast majority of exfiltration events its just needless (but nifty) icecream on top of the pain pie being served to the user.

    greybeard ,

    Even on userland stuff Apple controls tightly. If they want to require a user to manually click, they will get that. If they want it to be a physical mouse and keyboard doing it, they will get that too. They own the device, and have complete control, not the user or “owner”.

    forrgott ,

    Umm, no. Just…yeah, no.

    The main problem with this theory is that Microsoft is absolutely abysmal at user end security, and they always have been. Frankly, they do not understand the issue.

    But, more to the point, the whole TPM/secure boot stuff is a compromise; originally (I think this was about the time of Vista), they partnered with OEMs to have them include a DRM chip that made it literally impossible to install any non-windows OS on your laptop. They’ve managed to still get an implementation of TPM that makes switching your OS too confusing/difficult for the average user.

    Anyway, bottom line is they only care about money, and they neither care or even understand the security needs of the end user.

    mil ,

    Because Windows not only encrypts the system disk (C:) but also all connected hard drives

    And they’re gonna just enable it without asking if i want all my hard drives encrypted first?

    SpikesOtherDog ,

    Yes.

    24h2 will explicitly be using it by default.

    trollbearpig , (edited )

    Nah dude. TPMs have always been about implementing DRMs. These companies hate that they can’t control our PCs, they want to be sure we can only run their approved apps. Like it works in iOS and (to a lesser degree for now) in Android. And even there they are pushing hard for even more restrictive DRM.

    For example, some years ago I worked with a SaaS that implemented and sold some security products. One of our customers was a big retailer (for specialized products, not going into more details to avoid doxxing) that was having a problem with scalpers buying all their inventory as soon as they released it. So they were trying to put a show for regulators about stopping scalpers because their customers were complaining. We suggested that the only real solution was to have some real life verification of purchases. But in the end they went with the awful attestation APIs offered by Apple and Google to “fix” this. And in case you are not familiar, these APIs are just TPM based DRMs. So now, if you have a rooted/jailbroken phone you can’t even buy with this retailer anymore.

    Note that this company wasn’t trying to fuck customers directly, they were just lazy and incentivised to not really fix the problem (a sale is a sale, even if to a scalper). But even then the end result is that their customers got their digital freedom rights restricted. It’s just a terrible technology IMO, the incentives from companies are all terrible. And that’s before we start considering the real intentions of awful companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google. IMO they are actually pushing for techno feudalism, but that’s my conspiracy theory hahaha.

    So no, I doubt they were thinking about security with this recall bullshit. As other people have explained in their comments it doesn’t really protect much in practice. Plus this whole AI push has just been a stupid scramble from these companies to grab a big piece of the stupid AI pie from other companies hahaha, there is no long term plan here, don’t lie to yourself and us.

    0xD ,

    That’s not an unpopular opinion, it’s an outrageously stupid and uninformed one and you should keep it to yourself.

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