After years of watching spyware make a ton of money on their platform, Microsoft took a page out of Apple's book and created their own spyware for Windows.
What's the Apple reference to?
TotalRecall: Extracts and displays data from the Windows 11 Recall feature
21–30 of 98 posts
Re: TotalRecall: Extracts and displays data from the Windows 11 Recall feature
#22Security aside, I'm genuinely unsure what problem Recall is even meant to solve. Like most AI products and features announced over the past 18 months, it feels like a bunch of product people got into a meeting where they looked at the capabilities of the latest OpenAI model and then started spitballing feature ideas based not on user needs but on what GPTs can do. "Oh, these models can do OCR... why don't we screensh…
> What would you do with this feature if you had it?
I would disable it.
Re: TotalRecall: Extracts and displays data from the Windows 11 Recall feature
#23[deleted]
Re: TotalRecall: Extracts and displays data from the Windows 11 Recall feature
#24I understand that this feature is highly controversial and I myself have mixed feelings about it. But I don’t understand what is being “pwned” here: isn’t providing a photographic memory of everything you do on your PC exactly what this is supposed to do? Yes, you can access the data through other means than the official UI - this is the case for every software that runs on my PC.
See the README under "Q: But the BBC said data cannot be accessed remotely by hackers."
Re: TotalRecall: Extracts and displays data from the Windows 11 Recall feature
#25This was obviously bound to become a thing. I never got why Microsoft created this "feature" despite the self-evidently drastic risks, though I suppose I'm not too surprised.
What's more surprising though is how I remember HN folk being curiously welcoming to the whole thing when it was first announced.
Re: TotalRecall: Extracts and displays data from the Windows 11 Recall feature
#26I understand that this feature is highly controversial and I myself have mixed feelings about it. But I don’t understand what is being “pwned” here: isn’t providing a photographic memory of everything you do on your PC exactly what this is supposed to do? Yes, you can access the data through other means than the official UI - this is the case for every software that runs on my PC.
Yes, this is what Raymond Chen calls being on the other side of the airtight hatchway. Once you're admin, you can do anything. You can install keyloggers, install remote access tools, etc.
The only thing that Recall enables is that it creates this data. And since the data exists, it can be stolen. Data that doesn't exist cannot be stolen.
Re: TotalRecall: Extracts and displays data from the Windows 11 Recall feature
#27I understand that this feature is highly controversial and I myself have mixed feelings about it. But I don’t understand what is being “pwned” here: isn’t providing a photographic memory of everything you do on your PC exactly what this is supposed to do? Yes, you can access the data through other means than the official UI - this is the case for every software that runs on my PC.
The data is supposed to be stored secure and encrypted.
It's not, so it's a selfpwn by MS
Re: TotalRecall: Extracts and displays data from the Windows 11 Recall feature
#28Pwned in what way? This is just a SQLite database, you can "pwn" it with any SQLite client of your choice.
Weren't were told it was encrypted and that this sort of access wouldn't be possible?
Can you quote anything? I don't remember microsoft saying you couldn't access your own data.
The fact that a different user can get to it so easily is bad though.
And the FAQ claims that remote access is possible but does not elaborate, so that's confusing.
Re: TotalRecall: Extracts and displays data from the Windows 11 Recall feature
#29If an intruder gets into my local account, I'm far more worried about them stealing my cookies or accessing company IP than my browser history. With cookies and browser access, they could get into my emails, family photos, bank accounts, and even read desktop notifications from my phone's SMSs. For developers, the real risk lies in the variety of dependencies our apps have, which could get compromised. So, this isn't…
How is it useful unless you suffer from complete amnesia?
Since when is storing plaintext passwords on disk not a security concern anymore, which is precisely what this tool will do?
Re: TotalRecall: Extracts and displays data from the Windows 11 Recall feature
#30I understand that this feature is highly controversial and I myself have mixed feelings about it. But I don’t understand what is being “pwned” here: isn’t providing a photographic memory of everything you do on your PC exactly what this is supposed to do? Yes, you can access the data through other means than the official UI - this is the case for every software that runs on my PC.
See the README under "Q: But the BBC said data cannot be accessed remotely by hackers."
I am not sure if that justifies this.
If hackers pwn your desktop computer and you do not notice it, they get all the data you have access by yourself. Nothing new here.