YellowKey reportedly works in Windows 11, Windows Server 2022 and 2025, but not in Windows 10.
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.
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.
!remindme and all that lol
Ngl I feel like it’s just going to be “I thought it was backed up but it wasn’t and M$ wouldn’t write me a back door”
Which is fine as a back story, but also a dime a dozen really.
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.
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
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.
Somebody on twitter “reverse engineered” the exploit. Apparently ms shipped debug code in production. At least it’s not called Backdoor_FBI outright.
How it works:
- Recovery tools look for a config file called RecoverySimulation.ini on the OS drive
- If Active=Yes, it enables “test mode” for the recovery tools
- Test mode unlocks your BitLocker drive but a flag called FailRelock tells it to skip relocking
- cmd.exe spawns with full access to your “encrypted” drive
Does test mode unlock without the key?!? So it’s just “encrypted” with a generic key, and the unlock key is for authentication? That sounds insane, even for microsoft.
this works because the bitlocker key is stored in the TPM of the mainboard on the computer.
That is neccessary for the computer to be able to boot without entering your bitlocker password. you can configure it differently, but that is not default or super obvious to do.It always struck me as…poor…to not require a password for decryption. If you require zero knowlege from me, that means a stolen has everything inside needed to decrypt all the data.
And well, lookie there at the article!
😮💨
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 InformationNot 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.
Its bitlocker encrypted. You need to unlock the disk to see System Volume Information in Linux.
I’ll copy the bit here that I just edited into my reply after you edited the first post:
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.
Ah yeah, I misunderstood. Thanks for the clarification.
Your strike-through didn’t work somehow.
I know! I cant figure it out 😂
JuSt MaKe A sEcUrE bAcKdOoR
Surely the bad guys would never use an encryption backdoor made for the “good” guys??
BitLocker is basically malware, so who fucking cares. Far more people have it accidentally on and get locked out than people that have purposefully activated it.
You have just reminded me I could use this on the laptop my mother set up like five years ago and immediately forgot the password for.
Companies care
When I worked at an MSP, BitLocker cost companies thousands of dollars when it did something strange. User error has very catastrophic consequences with BitLocker and nobody that actually cares about security uses BitLocker. From my professional experience it is malware. The places where I have seen it used on purpose was because of policy bullshit and everyone agreed that it was a hindrance rather than an advantage.
And from my experience in banking, healthcare and others; every company uses bitlocker on workstations, I saw EncFS once in dozens of companies audited.
Using encryption on files systems is fine, but the Microslop Bitlocker implementation is awful. In any ecosystem that is not fully regulated BitLocker is a liability. I have had colleagues that could beat it.
Companies care that you have access to it. The “companies that care” literally wrote the backdoor.
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.
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
The thought did cross my mind, yeah. I don’t think it’s quite sufficient evidence to make such a big conclusion, but both of these seem so conspicuous
Lmao, remember when Microsoft wouldn’t make a backdoor for the US government? https://mashable.com/archive/fbi-microsoft-bitlocker-backdoor
I wonder what favor the government traded for this. Or maybe what threats were made to Microsoft…
Gee Mr Gates, that’s a nice monopoly you’ve got there. It sure would be a shame, if that anti-trust lawsuit the AG is researching were to happen to it…
I wonder what favor the government traded for this. Or maybe what threats were made to Microsoft…
Probably none; don’t forget, the majority of Lose11 is vibecoded
You think they just offered a backdoor to the US government unprompted? They just changed their mind? I know technically there isn’t evidence of it being for the government, but like… Come on. Something like this isn’t a bug or AI hallucinating
Bitlocker is Temu encryption
Temu is, as Chinese netizens will tell you, full of items on a lower 4th rung of quality well below what they are used to (at least the urbanites, but I doubt farmers want to buy junk for shit they need to do). That doesn’t mean that a single-board computer you buy off it would be incapable of anything you need to do, just surrounded by stuff advertised in a misleading way to get you to buy more shit.
Their business itself has customer data well-encrypted, never sends out your email to spammers (I isolate email accounts I would notice). They have never had a single data breach.
They have never reported a data breach.
Fixed that for you. Same goes for most companies though - the abscense of a publicly known data breach does not mean it hasn’t happened, with or without said company’s knowledge.
Closed source security mechanism has backdoor
More news at 9
Buttlocker
There was a reason for disappearance of TrueCrypt
TrueCrypt was forked into VeraCrypt, which is still maintained.
What reason? It was broken?
It was very likely compromised by NSA requiring a backdoor or weakened encryption that could be cracked by the US. There’s a long story that’s pretty interesting if you want to hit the rabbit hole
Suddenly dev resigned and posted bizzare post that read like he was at a gunpoint, recommending bitlocker instead of truecrypt
