Posted on 03/04/2006 6:22:54 AM PST by Panerai
Windows Vista won't have a backdoor that could be used by police forces to get into encrypted files, Microsoft has stressed.
In February, a BBC News story suggested that the British government was in discussions with Microsoft over backdoor access to the operating system. A backdoor is a method of bypassing normal authentication to gain access to a computer without to the PC user knowing.
But Microsoft has now quelled the suggestion that law enforcement might get such access.
"Microsoft has not and will not put 'backdoors' into Windows," a company representative said in a statement sent via e-mail.
The discussion centers on BitLocker Drive Encryption, a planned security feature for Vista, the update to the Windows operating system. BitLocker encrypts data to protect it if the computer is lost or stolen.
This feature could make it harder for law enforcement agencies to get access to data on seized computers.
"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."
Microsoft is talking to various governments about Vista. However, the talks are about using the new operating system and BitLocker for their own security, Ferguson wrote. "We also get questions from law enforcement organizations. They foresee that they will want to read BitLocker-encrypted data, and they want to be prepared," he wrote.
"Back doors are simply not acceptable," Ferguson wrote. "Besides, they wouldn't find anybody on this team willing to implement and test the back door."
Windows Vista, the successor to Windows XP, is slated to be available by year's end.
ping.
Yeah, right. I'm sure that'll happen.
I wasn't worried about it until Microsoft assured us that it wasn't going to happen.
Gee--I guess that's about the time I'll finally get around to upgrading to XP.
As if that's some type of giant 'obstacle'...
pings
They don't need to add a back door because there will already be several included in the initial release!
I miss Windows 3.11 for Workgroups.
I don't.
Hackers willl have one in about a week.
Anyone want to bet how long it will be before they cave in to China's demand for a "back door"?
Nope, they will just use a frontdoor, sidedoor, trapdoor, window ...
It is to laugh.
...porthole, tunnel, worm hole, conduit, passage, gaping hole...
"I miss Windows 3.11 for Workgroups."
Oh, not me. It was OK for its time, but that time has passed.
...hatch, gateway, arch...
That's like the feds saying they're not going to add a Mexican border crossing in order to stem the flow of illegal immigrants.
Windows is a security sieve. The government just has to know about the exploits before the general public does. In Microsloth's case, since they are refuse to voluntarily publicize flaws and are slow to fix them, that window of opportunity is quite large indeed.
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