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I'm worried that pushing whole-disc encryption at people who aren't aware of the consequences is a huge risk. I suspect for most consumer and small-business us

by hakfoo 5y ago

I'm worried that pushing whole-disc encryption at people who aren't aware of the consequences is a huge risk. I suspect for most consumer and small-business users, the risk of "a power surge blew out my motherboard and TPM, but I can take the surviving SSD and plunk it in a new PC and salvage my data" is a much more important use case than "someone might steal my PC and get at my valuable unencrypted data." I know we've heard people screaming about this on the MacOS side, but thereit's intertwined with the unrecoverability of a soldered storage subsystem. Large and technical organizations who might need the encryption are hopefully more likely to have IT staff and policies for backups and recovery, so they'll be able to handle that emergency better.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Yes this. I've scraped my SSD for data after it blew up :) The data wasn't that valuable otherwise I'd have had it backed up. The problem is it's my game PC. I don't want to constantly backup and sync all my game files as I can easily re-download them anyway and they take a ton of space. The savegames I do want backed up ideally but they're all over the filesystem. So, I recovered some that way. It was educational too, trying to scrape stuff off a broken NTFS image. But I certainly don't need or want my desktop PC encrypted. I only use my Windows box for gaming and I don't want to waste performance on it.
easton 5y ago
In Windows 10 today, enabling BitLocker backups the keys to your AAD/Microsoft Account (depending on Home or Pro). If you hook the drive to another Windows machine you should be able to decrypt it with not a lot of trouble (you might have to log into the Azure Portal to pull the keys out if you are in a corporate environment, but that's it).
- tiagod 5y ago
  Doesn't this defeat the purpose (at least partially?) I assume law enforcement can request those keys from Microsoft if they're backed up to the account.
  - ptk 5y ago
    I think the threat models of the overwhelming majority of individuals would prioritize scenarios that involve lost or stolen laptops/desktops over law enforcement. So Microsoft defaulting to protecting the security needs of the common man over criminals seems entirely reasonable to me. Criminals (or the security/privacy conscious) can organize their enterprises to make sure that their BitLocker keys aren’t stored where law enforcement agencies can get them. And I say that as someone who really does have concerns about the possibility that this can be abused, but I still believe it’s a reasonable default.

by hakfoo 5y ago

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Yes this. I've scraped my SSD for data after it blew up :) The data wasn't that valuable otherwise I'd have had it backed up. The problem is it's my game PC. I don't want to constantly backup and sync all my game files as I can easily re-download them anyway and they take a ton of space. The savegames I do want backed up ideally but they're all over the filesystem. So, I recovered some that way. It was educational too, trying to scrape stuff off a broken NTFS image. But I certainly don't need or want my desktop PC encrypted. I only use my Windows box for gaming and I don't want to waste performance on it.

easton 5y ago

In Windows 10 today, enabling BitLocker backups the keys to your AAD/Microsoft Account (depending on Home or Pro). If you hook the drive to another Windows machine you should be able to decrypt it with not a lot of trouble (you might have to log into the Azure Portal to pull the keys out if you are in a corporate environment, but that's it).

tiagod 5y ago
Doesn't this defeat the purpose (at least partially?) I assume law enforcement can request those keys from Microsoft if they're backed up to the account.
- ptk 5y ago
  I think the threat models of the overwhelming majority of individuals would prioritize scenarios that involve lost or stolen laptops/desktops over law enforcement. So Microsoft defaulting to protecting the security needs of the common man over criminals seems entirely reasonable to me. Criminals (or the security/privacy conscious) can organize their enterprises to make sure that their BitLocker keys aren’t stored where law enforcement agencies can get them. And I say that as someone who really does have concerns about the possibility that this can be abused, but I still believe it’s a reasonable default.