Aldryic C'boas
03-04-06, 06:00AM
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+Vista+wont+get+a+backdoor/2100-1016_3-6046016.html?tag=nefd.top
In February, a BBC News story suggested that the British government was in discussions with Microsoft over backdoor access to the operating system. A backdoor is a method of bypassing normal authentication to gain access to a computer without to the PC user knowing.
"Microsoft has not and will not put 'backdoors' into Windows," a company representative said in a statement sent via e-mail.
The discussion centers on BitLocker Drive Encryption, a planned security feature for Vista, the update to the Windows operating system. BitLocker encrypts data to protect it if the computer is lost or stolen.
This feature could make it harder for law enforcement agencies to get access to data on seized computers.
"The suggestion is that we are working with governments to create a back door so that they can always access BitLocker-encrypted data," Niels Ferguson, a developer and cryptographer at Microsoft, wrote Thursday on a corporate blog. "Over my dead body," he wrote in his post titled "Back-door nonsense."
I'm usually not the biggest fan of their business practices, but at least some of their morals (or maybe the morals of hundreds of workers who threaten to quit if it happens) are in the right spot.
In February, a BBC News story suggested that the British government was in discussions with Microsoft over backdoor access to the operating system. A backdoor is a method of bypassing normal authentication to gain access to a computer without to the PC user knowing.
"Microsoft has not and will not put 'backdoors' into Windows," a company representative said in a statement sent via e-mail.
The discussion centers on BitLocker Drive Encryption, a planned security feature for Vista, the update to the Windows operating system. BitLocker encrypts data to protect it if the computer is lost or stolen.
This feature could make it harder for law enforcement agencies to get access to data on seized computers.
"The suggestion is that we are working with governments to create a back door so that they can always access BitLocker-encrypted data," Niels Ferguson, a developer and cryptographer at Microsoft, wrote Thursday on a corporate blog. "Over my dead body," he wrote in his post titled "Back-door nonsense."
I'm usually not the biggest fan of their business practices, but at least some of their morals (or maybe the morals of hundreds of workers who threaten to quit if it happens) are in the right spot.