YellowKey reportedly works in Windows 11, Windows Server 2022 and 2025, but not in Windows 10.
From their blog:
Now regarding YellowKey, lots of you are wondering how does one even find such backdoor ?
I’ll tell you how, it took me more time trying to get it to work than the amount of sleep I had in two years combined. No AI involved, no help in any shape or form. I could have made some insane cash selling this but no amount of money will stand between me and my determination against Microsoft.
[…]
I can’t wait when I will be allowed to disclose the full story, I think people will find my crashout very reasonable and it definitely won’t be a good look for Microsoft.
Looking forward to the full story.
YellowKey can be triggered simply by merely copying some files to a USB stick and rebooting to the Windows Recovery Environment. We tested this ourselves, and sure enough, not only does it work, it bears all the hallmarks of a backdoor, down to the exploit’s files disappearing from the USB stick after it’s used once.
They also state the vulnerability is well-hidden, and that they “could have made some insane cash selling this, but no amount of money will stand between me and my determination against Microsoft.”
based.
You’d think this would only be the 100th-or-so embarrassing security-defying bug to plague micro$oft but you’d be wrong.
It’s like we’re in a world where most people use windows to log on to facebook. Its bizarre.
Backdoors are features, not bugs though.
The process is dead simple: grab any USB stick, get write access to the “System Volume Information,” and copy into it the “FsTx” folder and its contents. Shift+click Restart to get Windows to the recovery environment, but then switch to holding down the Control key and don’t let go. The machine will reboot, and without asking any questions or showing any menus, will drop you in an elevated command line with full access to the formerly Bitlocked drive, without asking for any keys.
~~~Not even local admins have access to it. A local admin would have to take ownership of that folder (not recommended), but if a local admin is doing that for this exploit, they can just turn off Bitlocker rather than go through this nonsense.~~~ I misunderstood the exploit. See replies.By exploit standards, that’s not especially hard. I don’t think there’s really anything blocking accessing it at all if an NTFS volume is mounted on a typical desktop Linux distro, as it’s just NTFS permissions blocking it, and they’re not typically obeyed by Linux in the first place.
In the face of your edit, I see that you’ve misunderstood the exploit. You need write access to the System Volume Information directory of your own USB stick, not anything on the target machine. It’s much easier to get access to things on a computer than it is to get access on one particular computer, and this exploit lets you jump from one to the other.
Its bitlocker encrypted. You need to unlock the disk to see System Volume Information in Linux.
I’ll copy the bit here that I just edited into my reply after you edited the first post:
In the face of your edit, I see that you’ve misunderstood the exploit. You need write access to the System Volume Information directory of your own USB stick, not anything on the target machine. It’s much easier to get access to things on a computer than it is to get access on one particular computer, and this exploit lets you jump from one to the other.
Ah yeah, I misunderstood. Thanks for the clarification.
Your strike-through didn’t work somehow.
I know! I cant figure it out 😂
It’s the spaces, I think
I tried without spaces too unfortunately
I think it’s three tildas.
Its two. It didn’t like the exclamation mark. I removed it and it started working.
That makes me think of when TrueCrypt suddenly stopped being developed: https://www.techmonitor.ai/technology/cybersecurity/is-truecrypt-a-victim-of-hacking-4280447?cf-view
Except Microsoft doesn’t have the respectability to discontinue a clearly broken product now that they’ve baked it into ever installaion of Windows 11 by default
As in you think they were pressured into stopping development so people would switch over to BitLocker, which now appears to have a backdoor put in by Microsoft or at least one of the developers, presumably at the behest of a government?
The thought did cross my mind, yeah. I don’t think it’s quite sufficient evidence to make such a big conclusion, but both of these seem so conspicuous
there’s a backdoor built right into bitlocker in the form of ‘recovery keys’–and for most users, microsoft knows what they are.
Yeah its Not Safe As.
Also your delivery from Flowers By Irene is waiting outside
if I just browsed the web and didn’t play any computer games I’d be on Mac or Linux. I’m only on windows because it’s familiar, works with my games (new and old), and I’m lazy
linux is at the point where your games probably now run better on linux than on windows, simply becausr windows has become so bloated with ai spyware running in the background
What the fuck is that OG image
a laptop that is literally cracked? :l
The files are IN the computer!
Which, I mean, he’s technically not wrong. Files exist as data on a hard drive that exists in the computer. If you destroy the hard drive in the computer the files cease to exist.
A laptop that’s been driven over or smashed with a hammer or otherwise crushed.
Yeah but why
Because thats what i want to do to my laptop that is stuck on the bitlocker screen
Windows = PC or something, who knows.
