According to experts, Windows Recall does not escape hackers
- June 4, 2024
- 0
The new recall function of Windows 11 turns out not to be so watertight after all. A British cybersecurity expert shows how data from the AI function can
The new recall function of Windows 11 turns out not to be so watertight after all. A British cybersecurity expert shows how data from the AI function can
The new recall function of Windows 11 turns out not to be so watertight after all. A British cybersecurity expert shows how data from the AI function can be easily retrieved.
Last month, Microsoft introduced Recall for Windows 11, a feature that records your every click. Powered by AI, the tool takes screenshots of all your actions and stores them in a timeline. Recall was introduced by Microsoft as a handy tool to quickly and easily view your history, but privacy and security experts soon questioned the feature. Kevin Beaumont, a British cybersecurity expert, also put it to the test and found that the stored data is easier to compromise than Microsoft claims.
Microsoft initially told the BBC that a hacker would need to gain access to your device and then unlock it to log in before the hacker can access any saved screenshots. A recent study by Kevin Beaumont, a British cybersecurity expert, shows that data recalls are much easier to compromise than Microsoft claims.
Beaumont points out that Recall converts your screenshots into searchable plain text using optical character recognition (OCR). This text data is written to a SQLite database in Windows users’ CoreAIPlatform folder. According to Microsoft, most Windows users operate as full administrators on their own devices, and virtually any device administrator can access the CoreAIPlatform folders on their PC, whether it belongs to their own profile or that of a partner or family member. The result is that by gaining access to a single Windows user profile, a hacker can find the Recall data of all users stored on that PC.
Recall hasn’t been launched yet, but with this research, Beaumon hopes Microsoft will rethink this tool and close the gaps.
Source: IT Daily
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