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.
100% certainty of backdoor. Is bitlocker developed outside of MSFT? Would seem to need MSFT cooperation to implement.
Bitlocker was developed entirely inside MSFT. Upon further review, there is a chance that this is all somewhat normal behaviour. Part of MSFT safeOS to make it convenient to recover bitlocker access, and update windows.
And be able to easily comply with law enforcement requests for decryption.
Ergo, the encryption is actually worthless.
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.
!remindme and all that lol
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
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.
does bitlocker encrypt whole volume, or userdata folders? It’s a performance issue to encrypt anything that doesn’t need to be.
Its whole-volume encryption, not file encryption. Most modern CPUs have built-in AES-NI instructions so its not much of a performance penalty (as long as AES is used for encryption).
You can do full disk or folders
Your strike-through didn’t work somehow.
I know! I cant figure it out 😂
It’s the spaces, I think
I tried without spaces too unfortunately
I think it’s three tildas.
Its two. It didn’t like the exclamation mark. I removed it and it started working.
Oh nice work!
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.
Backdoors are features, not bugs though.
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.
JuSt MaKe A sEcUrE bAcKdOoR
Surely the bad guys would never use an encryption backdoor made for the “good” guys??
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.
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
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.
weird bot
I manually post on these as well, they currently have only used post scheduling, haven’t set up feeds. It’s nice to hide my own accounts from each other, and if I don’t, then I’m going to forget and people will get mad that the bots are unmarked. Not your problem.
So, any comment on me pointing out the obvious racism?
The post you replied to never said “Chinese”, it said “Temu”. So you saying “Oh yeah Chinese people agree, Temu is garbage” actually proves… that it was a reasonable statement?
It still could’ve been said from a racist place or with undertones of racism, but it’s not necessarily guaranteed. Temu is garbage. Americans think so. Chinese people apparently think so.
How specious. Yes, Temu is trash mixed with treasure, but it’s the exact same garbage you pay a premium for at online or brick-and-mortar retailers, so I find it quite funny when USonians act above it. You don’t have an option for better quality that isn’t as Chinese as possible without getting ripped off, unless you need cameras or the latest graphics cards. Temu encryption is good. American corporate encryption leans very bad. Just watch some cybersecurity conferences. More than racism I’m irritated by people using terminology wrong.
Chinese people think Temu is trash and would never use it
I find it quite funny when USonians act above it
I’m going to stop talking to you now because wtf are you even on about. No one said anything about not wanting to buy Chinese goods. I specifically buy Chinese goods because at least their billionaires are kept to heel and are doing less to actively fuck over my life than Jeff Bezos.
Also no one said anything about Temu encryption but you, so again, wtf are you even on about?
Well, I’m happy to stop talking if you’re the type more interested in catfighting than even interpreting the conversation correctly. GreenBottles did in fact start off saying Microsoft is using Temu encryption. If Microsoft was using Temu encryption then their customers would be safe & they would have a record of zero data breaches. I don’t think farmers would buy anything important on Temu, I never said no Chinese person would use it. This is anecdotal from speaking to urbanites who were more interested in high-quality manufacturing for throwing some money around in the markets. Nevermind!
I’m glad you buy your Chinese stuff directly instead of through Bezos, but I hope you can see that the kids using Temu synonymously with “dogshit” are being somewhat racist. Since this isn’t based off a comparison with durable good from Amazon or the supermarket. Amazon support just isn’t worth the markup. It’s informed by propaganda spreading through unconventional means such as gore websites plastered with Russian and Chinese industrial accidents or hit-and-runs from the 2000s. Things change, and when that change is accompanied by a meme where a Chinese company is used as an adjective meaning dogshit, I think, well, the advertising firms that these Fortune 500 companies employ would feel quite chickenshit if they got beaten to the punch by natural slang developments. They’d be saying gee, I wish we got them talking like this five years before.
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.
of course there’s a back door. You motherfuckers think they’ll TPM secure boot lock file manage SECURTYYYY and not let five eyes waltz in whenever they fucking well please?
Finally, some good news. Now I can stop having to interact with my companies shitty outsourced service desk when I need a Bitlocker key.
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
Maybe it’s just a coincidence! Maybe those files just randomly do that lmao. Including deleting themselves!
Lol, imagine if they made that defense. “This was the result of an AI hallucination!”
Closed source security mechanism has backdoor
More news at 9
