Murphy’s Law: How Microsoft Vista Helps Terrorists

Posted on February 16, 2007
Filed Under Innovation |

Obviously the benefits far outweigh the risks, but this is case in point that the sword has two edges.

Murphy’s Law: How Microsoft Vista Helps Terrorists: Rarely does sensitive information on missing laptops find its way to the wrong people. The exception is the missing laptops in a combat zone. There, too many people know that any stolen laptops can have valuable data on them. For that reason, military and government users were glad to see Microsoft include strong data encryption (BitLocker) in the latest version (Vista) of its operating system. The bad news, at least for intelligence personnel, is that the bad guys will have convenient access to this easy-to-use encryption technology. There has been encryption technology like this available for years, but it was hard to install and use. BitLocker is designed for non-geeks. Apparently, there is no “back door” (easy way for the government to read BitLocker encrypted data). However, Microsoft may have shared technical data about Bit Locker with the NSA (National Security Agency, which handles American government and military cryptography), to make it easier to crack.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Comments

  • Feeds