Comment by dijit
1 day ago
> It generally is, because in the vast majority of cases users will not keep a local copy and will lose their data.
What's the equivalent of thinking users are this stupid?
I seem to recall that the banks repeatedly tell me not to share my PIN number with anyone, including (and especially) bank staff.
I'm told not to share images of my house keys on the internet, let alone handing them to the government or whathaveyou.
Yet for some unknown reason everyone should send their disk encryption keys to one of the largest companies in the world (largely outside of legal jurisdiction), because they themselves can't be trusted.
Bear in mind that with a(ny) TPM chip, you don't need to remember anything.
Come off it mate. You're having a laugh aren't you?
> What's the equivalent of thinking users are this stupid?
What's the equivalent of thinking security aficionados are clueless?
Security advice is dumb and detached from life, and puts ubdue burden on people that's not like anything else in life.
Sharing passwords is a feature, or rather a workaround because this industry doesn't recognize the concept of temporary delegation of authority, even though it's the basics of everyday life and work. That's what you do when you e.g. send your kid on a grocery run with your credit card.
Asking users to keep their 2FA recovery keys or disk encryption keys safe on their own - that's beyond ridiculous. Nothing else in life works that way. Not your government ID, not your bank account, not your password, not even the nuclear launch codes. Everything people are used to is fixable; there's always a recovery path for losing access to accounts or data. It may take time and might involve paying a notary or a court case, but there is always a way. But not so with encryption keys to your shitposts and vacation pictures in the cloud.
Why would you expect people to follow security advice correctly? It's detached from reality, dumb, and as Bitcoin showed, even having millions of dollars on the line doesn't make regular people capable of being responsible with encryption keys.
Your credit card analogy is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but it's carrying the wrong cargo. Sending your kid to the shops with your card is temporary delegation, not permanent key escrow to a third party you don't control. It's the difference between lending someone your house key for the weekend and posting a copy to the council "just in case you lose yours". And; you know that you've done it, you have personally weighed the risks and if something happens with your card/key in that window: you can hold them to account. (granted, keys can be copied)
> Nothing else in life works that way. Not your government ID, not your bank account, not your password, not even the nuclear launch codes.
Brilliant examples of why you're wrong:
Government IDs have recovery because the government is the trusted authority that verified you exist in the first place. Microsoft didn't issue your birth certificate.
Nuclear launch codes are literally designed around not giving any single entity complete access, hence the two-person rule and multiple independent key holders. You've just argued for my position.
Banks can reset your PIN because they're heavily regulated entities with legal obligations and actual consequences for breaching trust. Microsoft's legal department is larger than most countries' regulators.
> even having millions of dollars on the line doesn't make regular people capable of being responsible with encryption keys.
Right, so the solution is clearly to hand those keys to a corporation that's subject to government data requests, has been breached multiple times, and whose interests fundamentally don't align with yours? The problem with Bitcoin isn't that keys are hard - it's that the UX is atrocious. The solution is better tooling, not surveillance capitalism with extra steps.
You're not arguing for usability. You're arguing that we should trust a massive corporation more than we trust ourselves, whilst simultaneously claiming users are too thick to keep a recovery key in a drawer. Pick a lane.
Let's be serious for a second and consider what's more useful based on the likelihood of these things actually happening.
You're saying it's likely to happen that a laptop thief also is capable to stealing the recovery key from Microsoft'servers?
So therefore it would be better that users lost all their data if - an update bungles the tpm trust - their laptop dies and they extract the hard drive - they try to install another OS alongside but fuck up the tpm trust along the way - they have to replace a Mainboard - they want to upgrade their pc ?
I know for a fact which has happened to me more often.
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> Sending your kid to the shops with your card is temporary delegation, not permanent key escrow to a third party you don't control. It's the difference between lending someone your house key for the weekend and posting a copy to the council "just in case you lose yours".
Okay, then take sharing your PINs with your spouse. Or for that matter, account passwords or phone unlock patterns. It's a perfectly normal thing that many people (including myself) do, because it enables ad-hoc delegation. "Honey, can you copy those photos to my laptop and send them to godparents?", asks my wife as she hands me her phone and runs to help our daughter with something - implicitly trusting me with access to her phone, thumbdrive, Windows account, e-mail account, and WhatsApp/Messenger accounts.
This kind of ad-hoc requests happen for us regularly, in both directions, without giving it much of a thought[0]. It's common between couples, variants of that are also common within family (e.g. grandparents delegating most of computer stuff to their adult kids on an ad-hoc basis), and variants of that also happen regularly in workplaces[1], despite the whole corporate and legal bureaucracy trying its best to prevent it[2].
> Government IDs have recovery because the government is the trusted authority that verified you exist in the first place. Microsoft didn't issue your birth certificate.
But Microsoft issued your copy of Windows and Bitlocker and is the one responsible for your data getting encrypted. It's obvious for people to seek recourse with them. This is how it works in every industry other than tech, which is why I'm a supporter of governments actually regulating in requirements for tech companies to offer proper customer support, and stop with the "screw up managing 2FA recovery keys, lose your account forever" bullshit.
> Banks can reset your PIN because they're heavily regulated entities with legal obligations and actual consequences for breaching trust.
As it should be. As it works everywhere, except tech, and especially except in the minds of security aficionados.
> Nuclear launch codes are literally designed around not giving any single entity complete access, hence the two-person rule and multiple independent key holders.
Point being, if enough right people want the nukes to be launched, the nukes will be launched. This is about the highest degree of responsibility on the planet, and relevant systems do not have the property of "lose the encryption key we told you 5 years ago to write down, and it's mathematically proven that no one can ever access the system anymore". It would be stupid to demand that.
That's the difference between infosec industry and real life: in real life, there is always a way to recover. Infosec is trying to normalize data and access being fundamentally unrecoverable after even a slightest fuckup, which is a degree of risk individuals and society have not internalized yet, and are not equipped to handle.
> Right, so the solution is clearly to hand those keys to a corporation that's subject to government data requests, has been breached multiple times, and whose interests fundamentally don't align with yours?
Yes. For normal people, Microsoft is not a threat actor here. Nor is the government. Microsoft is offering a feature that keeps your data safe from thieves and stalkers (and arguably even organized crime), but that doesn't require you to suddenly treat your laptop with more care than you treat your government ID. They can do this, because for users of this feature, Microsoft is a trusted party.
Ultimately, that's what security aficionados and cryptocurrency people don't get: the world runs on trust. Trust is a feature.
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[0] - Though less and less of that because everyone and their dog now wants to require 2FA for everything. Instead of getting the hint that passwords are not meant to identify a specific individual, they're doubling down and tying every other operation to a mobile phone, so delegating desktop operations often requires handing over your phone as well, defeating the whole point. This is precisely what I mean by the industry not recognizing or supporting the concept of delegation of authority.
[1] - The infamous practice of writing passwords on post-it notes isn't just because of onerous password requirements, it's also a way to facilitate temporary delegation of authority. "Can you do X for me? Password is on a post-it in the top drawer."
[2] - GDPR or not, I still heard from doctors I know personally that sharing passwords to access patient data is common, and so is bringing some of it back home on a thumb drive, to do some work after hours. On the one hand, this creates some privacy risks for patient (and legal risk for hospitals) - but on the other hand, these doctors don't do it because they hate GDPR or their patients. They do it because it's the only way they can actually do their jobs effectively. If rules were actually enforced to prevent it, people would die. This is what I mean when I say that security advice is often dumb and out of touch with reality, and ignored for very good reasons.
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So what happens if your motherboard gets fried and you don’t have backups of your recovery key or your data? TPMs do fail on occasion. A bank PIN you can call and reset, they can already verify your identity through other means.
> So what happens if your motherboard gets fried and you don't have backups of your recovery key or your data?
If you don't have backups of your data, you've already lost regardless of where your recovery key lives. That's not an encryption problem, that's a "you didn't do backups" problem, which, I'll agree is a common issue. I wonder if the largest software company on the planet (with an operating system in practically every home) can help with making that better. Seems like Apple can, weird.
> TPMs do fail on occasion.
So do Microsoft's servers. Except Microsoft's servers are a target worth attacking, whereas your TPM isn't. When was the last time you heard about a targeted nation-state attack on someone's motherboard TPM versus a data breach at a cloud provider?
> A bank PIN you can call and reset, they can already verify your identity through other means.
Banks can do that because they're regulated financial institutions with actual legal obligations and consequences for getting it wrong. They also verified your identity when you opened the account, using government ID and proof of address.
Microsoft is not your bank, not your government, and has no such obligations. When they hand your keys to law enforcement, which they're legally compelled to do, you don't get a phone call asking if that's alright.
The solution to TPM failure is a local backup of your recovery key, stored securely. Not uploading it to someone else's computer and hoping for the best.
> I wonder if the largest software company on the planet (with an operating system in practically every home) can help with making that better. Seems like Apple can, weird.
If you're talking about time machine, windows has had options built in since NT.
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