Microsoft’s Recall Feature Is Even More Hackable Than You Thought
www.wired.com
A new discovery that the AI-enabled feature’s historical data can be accessed even by hackers without administrator privileges only contributes to the growing sense that the feature is a “dumpster fire.”
    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
      0·
      27 days ago

      Man, during my apprenticeship, I spent a month in the offensive security department, meaning white-hat hackers. My most memorable experience there was us scrolling through a WireShark log of a server (which a user had conveniently placed into a web-hosted folder, so that our automated scanners could pick up on it).

      Then we found an unencrypted FTP connection in there, which meant the password got logged in plain text and then we tried the same password for SSH. In roundabout 10 minutes, we had root access. On a real-world system.

      And yeah, watching the guy in the video scroll through those Recall logs, that felt eerily similar. Like you just need the right Ctrl+F, the right screenshot or any clue that they’re using some insecure technology to exploit. If you can extract those logs, it’s likely just a matter of time until you find something.

  • Hirom@beehaw.org
    0·
    28 days ago

    Not surprising. If there’s a way for a non-admin user to use this, it means there’s probably a way for a non-admin process to access the data.

    Even if if were more secure, there’s probably plenty of ways for attackers to escalate privileges to admin.

    The bigger issue is Microsoft providing an official tool for snooping on user activity. Malware won’t have to install their own, and recall taking screenshots periodically won’t be considered anomalous behaviour since it’s an official Microsoft service.

    • psud@aussie.zone
      0·
      28 days ago

      The article describes a tool that grabs the data without admin privileges, but yes, there are methods used by current malware to escalate privileges.

  • emerald@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    27 days ago

    I recently listened to the vergecast episode about all of MS’s recent announcements and was genuinely shocked to hear recall being compared to, more or less, the local caching that already happens while you use your computer (+ the normalized big tech tracking). My gut reaction was that that’s kind of an insane thing to think and I’m glad I’m being vindicated on that point.

    • Zworf@beehaw.org
      0·
      28 days ago

      I don’t think it will.

      Microsoft’s endgame is being the lord and master of AI. AI thrives on knowing more data about the user. What good is an assistant if it doesn’t know your habits, your wishes and desires, your schedule and your attitude towards each person in your life?

      This is not really a feature primarily aimed at helping the user directly (even though it’s currently marketed as such), but to have the AI build up a repository of knowledge about you. Which is hopefully used locally only. For now this seems to be the case, but knowing Microsoft, once they have established themselves as the leading product they will start monetising it in every way possible.

      Of course I’m very unhappy with this too. I’d like to have an AI assistant. But it has to be FOSS, and owned and operated by me. I don’t trust microsoft in any way. I’m already playing around with ollama, RAG scripting etc. It won’t be as good as simply signing up to OpenAI, Google or Microsoft but at least it will be mine.

  • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
    0·
    28 days ago

    AI taking more jobs.

    Now you just need a execute single PowerShell line to upload the whole history to the attacker, no need to hire skilled hackers to code custom malware or infostealers.

    What those malware devs are going to do now that ai replaced them?