Man, Microsoft just keeps footgunning this one.
Every new exploit, they clearly have a meeting and convince themselves “that’s gotta be the last of it, right?”
So the next day-after-patch-tuesday rolls around and lo and behold, this guy drops some more nukes on their reputation as far as their most important customer demographic are concerned (corporate IT)
Given this genuinely does seem to stem from Microsoft mishandling this guy, why the fuck do they keep escalating
Puts a lot of evidence towards his claims that Microsoft was behaving badly from the outset and the reason why he started doing this. They keep escalating. Its a war they started.
you know, since this little saga began I’ve had this tiny voice in my head hoping this one vindictive dude is, eventually, directly responsible for Microsoft going out of business/doing severe restructuring or downsizing as a consequence of businesses losing faith in the company’s products. Lots of people already raise an eyebrow at Windows 11’s issues, things like “all our shit is fundamentally insecure because microslop left a backdoor in [insert critical thing here], and has been for [weeks/months/years/???]” tend to have an adverse effect on sales, especially to risk-averse business customers. It’s not impossible to imagine that continued “holy fuck what 0day exploit just dropped?” incidents, on the level of YellowKey, happening every month, could result in businesses deciding to drop their enterprise licensing of MS products; and that’s going to hurt. That’s where a big chunk, if not the biggest chunk iirc, of their revenue comes from. It’s unlikely, it’s a longshot, but I’m allowed to have hope.
I’m especially now wondering, if YellowKey was the teaser – you know, just casually revealing a backdoor in BitLocker, like nbd – what the actual fuck are they going to drop in July? If that’s the appetizer, how juicy’s the entree gonna be?
I think as long as nothing actually happens, other companies wont care. No one is capable of thinking about the future anymore, there is only next quartal and short term profits.
It might actually be needed for something big to go down first, like those 0day exploits actually get exploited and some client company or few loses a lot of money because of it. Considering how unsecure windows is, i’m a bit perplexed how nothing hasn’t happened already.
Some of the other 0days this guy released are already being actively exploited in the wild, but no reports of big losses as a result of them yet. Having said that, the entire point of BitLocker was that it was full disk encryption that you didn’t have to think too much about; and now I bet every corporate IT department out there is looking at it with suspicion. If this guy can keep delivering on “things that keep sysadmins awake at night”, like “oh god every hard drive we’ve had stolen in the last few years can be fully decrypted now”, eventually a lot of them will decide it is less harrowing and less work to move their entire stack away from Microsoft than it is to live with them.
They’d better not be overselling this bomb they’re gonna drop in July. I’m already moved over to Linux fully now, to quote photonicinduction: I want flames. I don’t just want to see it all over the tech news, I’m hoping he screws with them hard enough the story makes it to actual TV news channels.
Microsoft going out of business/doing severe restructuring or downsizing
Although I wonder if they could. Microsoft seems like one of those “too big to fail” companies, where they’d never be allowed to fall on their face, since Azure and Exchange prop up so many things. It’s not like there’s a major second option for an OS if you just buy a computer off the shelf like a lot of people do. You either get a Windows or a Mac.
If that’s the appetizer, how juicy’s the entree gonna be?
At the risk of going on a tangent, isn’t the entrée the appetiser? You don’t have an appetiser, an entrée, and then the main course.
Very little seems to be beyond the incredulity of MS meetings, remember they had a meeting where someone suggested the OS take a screenshot every ten seconds of whatever the user was doing and upload it to MS servers and rather than everyone laughing they agreed to move it into development.
rather than everyone laughing
You misspelled “firing the authoritarian nutjob for cause,” which would’ve been the bare minimum of reasonable reactions.
if that’s bare minimum, what is the upper limit for reasonable reactions? Hang him?
Publicly shame, actively blacklist them from ever working in any of their companies, and making sure everybody in the IT space knows this, would ruin this person’s ability to do any more damage and might be the upper limit? Well that or doing a Boeing… Take your pick.
Snapshots and the contextual information derived from them are saved and encrypted to your local hard drive. Recall does not share snapshots or associated data with Microsoft or third parties, nor is it shared between different Windows users on the same device. Windows will ask for your permission before saving snapshots. You are always in control of what apps and websites get saved in snapshots, and you can delete snapshots, pause or turn them off at any time. Any future options for the user to share data will require fully informed explicit action by the user.
Considering the thread we’re talking in, it’s up to you if you trust MS to implement this well, but they are not uploading the screenshots to the cloud.
Personally I think the idea of Recall is great if it works to help you and only you. The problem isn’t the idea, it’s the trust. If a reputable open source project or Linux distro made a feature like this I think it would be cool, because I know my privacy is going to be respected and the feature is designed solely to help me and nothing more. However, when MS suggests this I’m immediately cautious, skeptical, and concerned about how it could be used against me.
The statement you quoted is itself a lie. It talks about snapshots, when that’s not at all what Recall is about. It takes snapshots, true. But it does not matter to MS whether the snapshots themselves are saved, or where. “Recall does not share snapshots or associated data” is a reference solely to the snapshot itself, not the data Recall creates from it.
Here’s what really happens. Once a snapshot is taken, it is analyzed with AI as well as converted into text (if text is present) and all that content (including passwords, banking details, medical records, whatever passes the desktop when a snapshot is taken) plus its local AI analysis is kept in a local database. That shrinks its size to almost nothing, making it much easier for MS to collect. This secretive local database itself is inaccessible to you (even as admin), one you have zero rights to control or delete or edit or even view, one over which you are never given any permissions, and at regular intervals that database is scraped and sent back to MS to use in data aggregation and resale and AI training and whatever the fuck else they want to do with it. Sure, you can turn off Recall in the AI settings, but it has now been proven that any Windows update just turns it all back on again.
Knowing this, go back and reread their statement in regard to snapshots. The entire thing is a misdirection and never once addresses the real payload of Recall and why MS, even after they pinky swore they had dropped it, they continued partnering with hardware makers to deliver “Recall-ready” PCs that already have the requisite NPU on the motherboard, which are needed to do all that local data OCR and analysis on the snapshots that don’t even matter to MS once they’ve been scraped for content.
It’s also a big attack surface. Just like how a lot of malware looks for the browser password cache now, it doesn’t take much for a malware developer to just go for the recall store. The malware doesn’t need to pack in software to take screenshots, if the OS serves it up for them on a platter.
The location is known, and I seem to remember it being fairly simple to view the contents in the right system viewer with a bit of work, so yeah. I never considered that but you’re quite right: MS is packaging that shit up all nice and handy for whoever can grab it by whatever means.
“Footgunning”?
A colloquial term equivalent to “shooting oneself in the foot”
A very clear answer
An explanatory sequence of words
Over-complication of ‘sentence’
AI loves to use the word. I never heard it regularly until AI started helping popularize it.
FWIW I’ve proudly been using it for years
Prove you haven’t been an Ai for years
You’re very right! There’s a lot of reasons to believe I might be an AI, such as:
- overusing bulleted lists and other common basic formatting features to improve readability
- uncommon grammatical symbols primarily used by autistic people in writing appearing overly-frequently
- overly bubbly, wordy and pleasant writing style that continues to respond even to terminating phrases and instructions to my own detriment
The verdict? I may in fact be an AI
Did this one achieve some intense introspection just now?
Shit
Then you did not speak with programmers regularly, I learned this term probably back in 2008ish
I guess so. I’ve learned lots of words from the ones I know, but not this one.
If the guy exposing the exploits is the be believed, they notified MS (or attempted to) and were ignored and then actively rebuffed. Then MS deleted the account (and the proof that this person actually reported these vulnerabilities/bugs).
Even if this person is lying I’m more likely to believe MS is the bad guy here. It seems like bullying to me. That and an attempt to mask the problems at the company because they have been getting a lot of bad press and are having trouble with the entirety of windows 11 which they forced on people and they keep breaking. The adoption rate of windows 11 being so bad also lends credence to what this person is claiming.
Microsoft has always been an evil company, but wow they are trying their hardest to reach Gates level of shit
It sounds like the guy treats these issues in a very standard way by notifying the company beforehand with a note that the findings will be made publicly at a certain date. Microsoft ignores it and it inevitably gets published. That‘s standard procedure. Microsoft throwing a tantrum is the only extra thing here although „shooting the messenger“ seems to become more common these days with these findings.
“Hey, let’s piss off the security expert who’s really good at finding flaws in our products. There’s literally no downside.”
"Oh, the one who just published two exploits on our product, after we fucked them over during the responsible disclosure process? Great idea! What are the chances they’ll find another one, right?
He’s done more than two. This was his second round of releases. He was also the one that found the vulnerability in Windows Defender.
I feel that companies like Microsoft have forgotten that bug bounties and ethical reporting are the compromise where they agree to pay a fair amount for the bugs and are given time to fix them and the security researcher forgoes the 10x price they could get on the black market.
Given the rise in mercenary hacking/spyware corporations, the bug researchers could probably get way more money through those alternate, and still legal, channels.
So I hear.
And this is why if you’re going to post something like this, you host your own git. Or use something like codeberg.
The dichotomy here is you can’t be famous hosting exploits on smaller forges. Gotta be on the big platforms where you can be starred and forked for social media cred to make news stories to impress your friends. IIRC I think HeartBleed (maybe ShellShock?) was the tip of this popularity iceberg…
Does anyone care about stars?
Openclaw is the most starred repo in years (i wonder why) and is incredibly niche.
Stars are kind of a scam.
I do loosely use stars to gauge how popular a library/framework is before investing a lot of time in it, however, I do also use other metrics like PR count, issues, etc
Stars are just someone’s bookmark (me included) because there’s no simple “bookmark this because I’ll forget in an hour and want to look at it later when I have time.” If one trusts Stars, you’re literally trusting a bookmark that I didn’t put more than 2 seconds of thought into clicking because I have a bad memory. Many I know do the same.
I go straight to code history, show me what the commits look like. One can derive a lot about the project based on just the way the commit messages are written before looking at the code being changed. How the code is changed over time (process, communication, methods, etc.) adds more layers to the qualitative observation. I move on to Issues when I want to see how the devs interact with the users having problems, which is another story.
https://codeberg.org/eloy/BlueHammer
Codeberg archived mirror
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Okay,
So let me get this straight, when I actively asked you to communicate with me, you refused, humiliated me and made sure to insult me in front of people.
You defame me in public with your CVE-2026-45585 advisory even though you literally deleted the Microsoft account I used to report bugs to you with and I got zero pennies from doing so and I still happily did like an idiot.
Now you take the courtesy to flag my github account and wipe it out of the public, just like that ? You are proving to everyone that you actively escalating this conflict but I’m done begging you.
I might sound like crazy idiot who is whinning around but I have proof for every single word I said, I just can’t release it yet. Why ? Microsoft still has chains in my hands, it’s been like this for years and I just can’t stay silent anymore. I hope I can release the documents soon.
Mark this date July 14th, I will make sure your bones are shattered that day. Nothing will be released this June (or maybe I will release smtg, depending on circumstances).
Also,
CVE-2026-45498 is UnDefend
CVE-2026-41091 is RedSun
New GitLab account,
https://gitlab.com/nightmare-eclipse
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https://deadeclipse666.blogspot.com/
Their account on GitLab is already blocked https://gitlab.com/nightmare-eclipse
Lmao. Is there anywhere they can go that wouldn’t immediately block them?
He can use a locally hosted gitea
Of course he can… But then it’s as simple as a DDoS attack to shut it down. He wouldn’t want to host it on his own equipment, because there is a huge possibility for attack. He can pay for a server, but I assume he’d just setup the one. Unless he pays for a distributed server setup, there would be a single point of failure, and a single server to overwhelm. He can use CloudFlare, but then CloudFlare can decide they don’t like his content either, and just block access altogether.
All of those things are much harder with an existing website with a larger infrastructure, and content other than his own posts.
He could host a Tor Hidden Service or an I2P eepsite. Still possible to DDoS, but a bit harder. But then you’re missing out on 99% of spreading possibilities.
Tor is a good idea. There are plenty of people that would happily seed the repository to spite Microslop
Well said… It would be difficult to match the load balancers larger sites have. Cost, resources, etc. Side note: fuck cloudflare.
Put it on i2p and let the world shuffle it around.
Torrent magnet link to social media on several seed boxes. Magnet links with DHT (Distributed Hash Table) are fully decentralized. You can’t stop a 60 character text string.
Maybe they’d try to ban text strings again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number
Torrent magnet link to social media on several seed boxes. Magnet links with DHT (Distributed Hash Table) are fully decentralized. You can’t stop a 60 character text string.
Maybe they’d try to ban text strings again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number
I2P would be fine. They can ddos the service to an extent, but they’d just have to leave it there forever.
Plebbit, they don’t moderate anything AFAIK (with predictable results)
What’s the context here?
Can’t wait for the drama to escalate. Maybe he sells these on black market for millions? Who knows. Banning his account is like pouring salt on the wound.
I wonder if the dude happened to find an internally documented backdoor intended for use by government actors? Or most likely they just don’t wanna deal with it and the perceived fastest way to deal with it is to try and bury it. Both could be true, but I’m just speculating.
Their april 15th blog post explicitly calls it a backdoor and mentions it was very well hidden. I’m interested to see what comes of this
Did you see the last post?
I was wondering that myself.
I mean, a mechanism that allows you to get the malware scanner to place whatever software you want on a machine, give it system access and then execute it, feels like a prime suspect for “lawful source interception” bullshit.I do feel like it’s entirely possible it was a bug. I would imagine if they wanted to do a backdoor, they would require some form of key. There would need to be a form of revocation. If an employee, either for the government or Microsoft, went rogue then they could abuse that, or at the very least whistleblow and it would be easily verifiable for other entities.
I do feel like it’s entirely possible it was a bug. I would imagine if they wanted to do a backdoor, they would require some form of key.
That would negate plausible deniability.
I’m surprised admins found a window large enough when github wasn’t down to ban the researcher.
Microsoft closed the case after the reporter refused to submit a video of the exploit
They don’t have any actual fucking security experts there, so they require video proof that ape will understand.
Posting zero day exploits on github is a shit move. But Microsoft should be happy that this guy posted it on github rather than selling it on the black market.
Banning his guthub account won’t make zero day vulnerabilities go away ffs.
I am so calling it ‘guthub’ from now on.
😅
git gut(hub)
You can well imagine that this reaction will fall on fruitful ground that some security experts will think twice about sending it to M$ or better selling it on the dark web, especially zero day exploits! Hell, boy, Microsoft does not seem to know with whom they are messing with.
Is this the bitlocker backdoor? That’s not an exploit / zeroday
Thats making a backdoor be known.
Well the thing is it’s now been zero days since they had to write a new backdoor.
They don’t need to write a new one, they probably already have more than one built and deployed for the same thing.
But it’s a good idea to get started on another one, so I’m really just complaining about the word ‘had’ as if it was a requirement.
and their gitlab is already blocked as well
Why did gitlab block it?
They probably don’t want to deal with Microsoft lawyers.
Because their CEO and CTO are from Microsoft. I’m waiting for acquisition.
The saga has drawn speculation from other experts, like William Dormann from Tharros, who said that “MSRC used to be quite excellent to work with. But to save money, Microsoft fired the skilled people, leaving flowchart followers. I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft closed the case after the reporter refused to submit a video of the exploit, since that’s apparently an MSRC requirement now.”
. . . In this day and age, when AI-powered security research has arguably made the standard 90-day disclosure-to-patch window completely obsolete, and both time-until-exploit and unused exploits are both nearing zero, Microsoft and other software players would do well to adjust their policies.
That’s such an insane aside. 90-day disclosure-to-patch. Craziness.
On the other hand, this is exactly the way microsoft has been for - easily - 30 years. Like, 1996 microsoft could be slotted into today and literally nothing would change. Other than Nadella would probably be on a bunch of coke.
What even is the headline
That was my thought, what a absolute mess of a ‘sentence’.
This is what happens when the source code isnt open to review.
Microsoft has been committing class war against computer users since the 90’s and they get all butt hurt as soon as someone holds their code to the flame.
I can’t imagine what nightmarish vulnerabilities Microsoft knows about and is hiding because they would require too much effort to patch. I bet there are some really crazy things that have probably been wide open for decades if you only knew where to look.
Maybe like bitlocker 🤔 It’s almost like keeping windos closed source enables the government to keep exploits to themselves. But that can’t be the truth… can it?
I’m no expert. Is this an issue where MS is refusing to pay bounties to the researcher for finding the bugs, and MS follows up by deleting the researcher’s git hub? Am I missing anything? If I understand the basics, this is how you turn a white hat into a black hat. Good job microslop.
So the researcher has posted on their blog over the past few months some rants about Microsoft “destroying their life” and vowing to continue to post zero days in retaliation, and has been posting proof of concept code for these zero days to their GitHub.
From their rants (there’s a couple of fresh ones including indication that tomorrow will be “one of the hardest days of their life” and that they’ll post a big zero day on July 14th) it sounds like Microsoft deleted their account, revoked their access to the responsible disclosure portal and they’ve had some back and forth discussions in private that they’re now making more public
Normally what happens is researchers report vulnerabilities via Microsoft’s purpose-built bug bounty portal, and Microsoft can patch these vulnerabilities before they can be actively exploited, and researchers can pocket enough income to make a living entirely off of bug bounties. Obviously this all broke down in the case of this particular researcher so here we are
His blog posts share his side of the story, but Microsoft has not made any comments about what happened.
From March 26:
I never wanted to reopen a blog and a new github account to drop code…
But someone violated our agreement and left me homeless with nothing. They knew this will happen and they still stabbed me in the back anyways, this is their decision not mine.
Then on April 15:
Normally, I would go through the process of begging them to fix a bug but to summarize, I was told personally by them that they will ruin my life and they did and I’m not sure if I was the only who had this horride experience or few people did but I think most would just eat it and cut their losses but for me, they took away everything. They mopped the floor with me and pulled every childish game they could. It was soo bad at some point I was wondering if I was dealing with a massive corporation or someone who is just having fun seeing me suffer but it seems to be a collective decision.
And one other thing, they do everything but support the research community, I won’t disclose details but they sabotage people a lot. I mean just look at the past, Microsoft is the only major company who had a track of multiple vulnerabilities being publicly disclosed just because the researchers were soo upset by how MSRC treated them.
Unfortunately, the folks who have the capacity to stop those disclosures, not only don’t care but also seems to push harder for worst exploits to be released, I didn’t want to be evil but they are actively poking me to start releasing RCEs which I will be doing at some point…
I will personally make sure that it gets funnier every single time Microsoft releases a patch.
There was a comment on the first post that I feel like is pretty on point, though a bit arm chair psychologist:
You’re a smart guy. Maybe a savant. Just wondering if you’re BiPolar (like me) and see a different reality than what is real. Been there.
I don’t think we know enough information to say what the root cause is, but this is definitely not the way to go about anything on the M$ side.
The way the system autodeletes the exploit trigger makes it sound like it was less a bug and more a backdoor.
