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Microsoft Terminates accounts for Veracrypt, Wireguard devs (www.pcmag.com)

submitted 3 days ago by Majestic@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.ml

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This affects their ability to sign new device drivers on Windows if they want to create updated versions. Without signed device drivers the software will not work.

No explanation was given. Some think it may be a bug or AI tool that isn't working right. But the NSA really hates both of these tools.

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[–] hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 24 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

"Not every 'WTF micro$oft' moment is a slam dunk,"

Brother, your quotas of shit hitting the fan is reaching fecal velocity of new degrees. Your company's current state of existence has absolved you of the right to a balanced perspective.

What I'm trying to say is it's never gonna Microsoft 100% of the time, but at this point no one trusts you, and you've earned that, and now you have to live with the consequences. I know this Microsoft contact is probably not the reason, but he is still working there, and that means he deserves some of the blame on a constructive level.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 14 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Hanselman pointed to a Microsoft blog post noting that, starting in October, the company began requiring "mandatory account verification for all partners in the Windows Hardware Program," which also covers certifying software drivers. Last month, the company updated the post to say: "Accounts that did not successfully complete account verification and received a Rejected verification status have been suspended from the Windows Hardware Program, and submissions from these accounts are no longer permitted."

So they didn't hand over their blood and urine samples to Microsoft so they don't get to be developers anymore

[–] Majestic@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Except it notes that the wireguard dev definitely complied with that so while Microslop might be hiding behind that fiction it is just a fiction and not the real cause.

I'm suspicious if it isn't because the US has discovered something exploitable in both wireguard and veracrypt and want to prevent it being patched while they (the US) unleash it against their enemies over a prolonged period. That or just crushing privacy.

Linux stay winning I guess as this would be the first case in history where Microsoft has used its position as gatekeeper to prevent Windows users from running software they want to run in this manner. Even worse you have to disable driver signature enforcement system-wide to bypass it, it's more locked down than Apple which can grant per application gate-keeper exemptions. It's just up until now Microsoft handed out driver signing like candy.

It's interesting both of these are also tools likely be targeted by the "child safety" panic being shopped around to enact ID laws. Encryption without a backdoor is something they really hate whether it's for data in transit or at rest.

One last thought is that Microsoft mentioned kicking third parties out of the kernel after the Crowdstrike fiasco where they borked a ton of airline computers due to awful practices. Many hoped it would mean kicking anti-cheat out of the kernel but it would be very Microsoft to start with kicking privacy tools out instead and simply insist that using Windows bitlocker is enough and Windows VPN settings are adequate and therefore these software needn't be in the kernel.

[–] mr_anny@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 days ago

If you read the paragraph following this one, you'd see they had done it already. -.-

[–] ms_lane@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago

Microslop.

[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Microsoft’s partner portal website mysteriously said his account had been deactivated, without specifying why.

My money is on Microsoft's AI based detections causing false positives again. I spend way too much time chasing ghosts from Defender. Their machine learning based signatures are especially egregious. You get an alert with a name like "Win32/Wacatac.b!ml". That last "ml" bit denotes that it's machine learning based. And then you get fuck all to help you determine why the alert fired. Sure, it might actually be a trojan. More likely, it's a false positive. But who knows, because Microsoft won't provide enough information to perform a reasonable analysis of the binary.

And MS has been pushing CoPilot hard. It's in everything and it's happy to slop up answers for you. The accuracy of those answers though can be a bit spotty. I'd certainly never turn it loose on tools which can have business impact. But, I doubt Microsoft has any such reservations about letting CoPilot slop all over third party devs.