Technology

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.

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.

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.

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.

if I just browsed the web and didn't play any computer games I'd be on Mac or Linux. I'm only on windows because it's familiar, works with my games (new and old), and I'm lazy

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.

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

What the fuck is that OG image