February 15th, 2006
U.K. Wants Backdoor Into Vista PCs
By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
I’m surprised … surprised the U.S. didn’t say anything about this first, knowing our government. 
At any rate, because of the new built-in drive encryption features in Windows Vista, law enforcement officials may need a way around the encryption. Professor Ross Anderson of Cambridge University was testifying before the Commons home affairs select committee on a different matter when he spoke on this.
The system uses BitLocker Drive Encryption through a chip called TPM (Trusted Platform Module) in the computer’s motherboard.
“This means that by default your hard disk is encrypted by using a key that you cannot physically get at … an unfortunate side effect from law enforcement is it would be technically fairly seriously difficult to dig encrypted material out of the system if it has been set up competently.”
The committee heard that suspects could claim to have lost their encryption key - although juries could decide to let this count this against them in the same way as refusing to answer questions in a police interview. Source: BBC News
More about BitLocker Drive Encryption here.
We Say: I can see their point, but how long would it take before a hacker would find or figure out the backdoor and publish this? From a user perspective, the more complexity, the more chance for error. For me, I would probably keep this feature turned off at a drive level. Things I really need protected on my system are already protected with encryption through 3rd-party methods anyway, and I’d rather not risk the integrity of the whole drive (bugs in Windows OSes, anyone?).
David Johnston says:
A backdoor to encryption really defeats the whole point and purpose of it. I’m sure that somebody would be able to find it and once that information gets out, the drive encryption is worthless.
February 15th, 2006 at 8:57 am
Lockergnome's Tech News Watch says:
U.K. Wants Back Door Into Vista PCs
Michael Santo of RealTechNews writes: I’m surprised… surprised the U.S. didn’t say anything about this first, knowing our government.
At any rate, because of the new built-in drive encryption features in Windows Vista, law enforcement officials…
February 15th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
ValuedCustomer says:
“I’m surprised … surprised the U.S. didn’t say anything about this first, knowing our government.”
riiight, cuz everyone knows how invasive the US govt is compared to other 1st-world goverments. puhlease. - ever even been to the UK? notice all those cute little CCTV cameras EVERYWHERE? maybe you didn’t (they’re hidden many times) FYI, those cameras aren’t there to protect you, they’re there to keep an eye on you. and let’s not even start on the national id cards that are just around the bend for the UK. - Don’t get me wrong, the UK is a great country and I really like this site but let’s try and keep political-fallacies/partisan-despotic-fantasies apart from our techy news, k?
on this site, today, we’re all techy-dorks! \;^)-
February 15th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Perros says:
Meh, the CCTV cameras are mostly privately run.
As for a backdoor. This is definitely a bad idea. I can’t see Microsoft giving in to it either, because other government legislation (for the US and UK governments) states that ALL features have to be fully documented and public (which is why they stopped putting in easter eggs). So any backdoor would have to be public, which ruins the point!
-Perros-
February 16th, 2006 at 12:03 am
Sergio Pereira says:
Now I’m concerned. I’m starting to use TrueCrypt (truecrypt.org) extensively for protecting sensitive information. Does anyone know if TrueCrypt or any of the algorithms used there have backdoors?
February 16th, 2006 at 5:57 am
Computerworld Blogs says:
Office Live is not MS Office (and a lacy keyboard)
In today’s IT Blogwatch, we look at Office Live — is it alive or dead? Not to mention eat and type off the same tablecloth …
February 16th, 2006 at 10:14 am
Zack says:
Sergio: No. TrueCrypt is an excellent choice for encryption, as it employs well known algorithms that are trusted. The software is open source, so they could not get away with putting a backdoor in because there is no way to hide it. Refer to the TrueCrypt FAQ for more information…
February 16th, 2006 at 11:27 am
veridicus says:
Most people don’t know the NSA has had a back door into Windows for many years: http://www.msversus.org/node/65
February 16th, 2006 at 11:57 am
George Jensen says:
Drive all the peeping toms nuts. Take some random numbers, encrypt them, send messages all over, hoping for interception by the decrypting organizations. Wonder what the cost is to try to decypher the undecypherable.
February 18th, 2006 at 9:17 am
cherly says:
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July 25th, 2006 at 2:31 am
clifford says:
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July 26th, 2006 at 12:26 pm