Microsoft terminated the account VeraCrypt used to sign Windows drivers • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft terminated the account VeraCrypt used to sign Windows drivers

#351

Post by trinsic2 » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

electroly wrote: post #200

jonathanstrange wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is just planning to publish signed desktop software for Windows, this is deeply worrying. What reasons could there be for cancelling a certificate, especially when it has been used for years and the identity is already established? Are there some ways to combat such decisions legally?

Perhaps not legally, but technically, you have an option: don't use the Microsoft Store. This isn't as wild a suggestion as it may seem to non-Windows users: the store is barely used by Windows users. You can get your own code signing certificate from a public CA, sign your own installer, and post it on your website. This is still the primary way that Windows software is distributed. Microsoft does not have a hand in…

Yep. OS level stores are just way for the org to exercise control over installs.

I have stay far away from that process for a long time. Apple MacOS seems like the worst in that department IMHO.

Re: Microsoft terminated the account VeraCrypt used to sign Windows drivers

#352

Post by jonathanstrange » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

NewsaHackO wrote: post #290

ninjagoo wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been clear for a while that certain providers and services need to be regulated as utilities - Microsoft, Google, Apple, Visa, Mastercard, and soon Openai and Anthropic. It should be illegal for these companies, just like utilities, to deny service to anyone or any entity in good standing for dues. There is little hope for getting this through in the US where most politicians of any stripe hate the public, and…

It always weird to see how dichotomy of some people saying AI will never be profitable and are doomed to fail and others saying that they are such a essential public service that they are a utility and should be subject to government regulation. Hopefully they are not the same group of people, but I suspect there is a greater overlap that one would expect.

I'm not one of those people but want to point out that there isn't much of a contradiction there. I don't know if hospitals, universities, train tracks, roads, and libraries technically speaking count as utilities but they overall don't seem to be profitable and at the same time are extremely desirable for a society and an economy to have. AI could turn out to be of the same sort.

Re: Microsoft terminated the account VeraCrypt used to sign Windows drivers

#353

Post by kbelder » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 7:01 PM UTC

greenavocado wrote: post #211

miroljub wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe time for a custom license that would require M$ to sign up for special T&Cs if they want to use this software? Who cares if it's OSI-approved or not, a line saying "M$, Google, and the like need written permission for every use case" would help to make those leeches honest. Just learn from the JSLint example.

This license modifier already exists for others to use (I can't post the direct links here because this site will sanction me for doing so) plus n-word dot com hosts information about the plus n-word license which purports: - The software will not be used or hosted by western corporations that promote censorship - The software will not be used or hosted by compromised individuals that promote censorship - Users of th…

Why "Western" corporations that promote censorship? Non-western censorship is allowed?

Re: Microsoft terminated the account VeraCrypt used to sign Windows drivers

#354

Post by zelphirkalt » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 7:01 PM UTC

ninjagoo wrote: post #241

zx2c4 wrote: post #39

This is the same problem I'm currently facing with WireGuard. No warning at all, no notification. One day I sign in to publish an update, and yikes, account suspended. Currently undergoing some sort of 60 days appeals process, but who knows. That's kind of crazy: what if there were some critical RCE in WireGuard, being exploited in the wild, and I needed to update users immediately? (That's just hypothetical; don't f…

It has been clear for a while that certain providers and services need to be regulated as utilities - Microsoft, Google, Apple, Visa, Mastercard, and soon Openai and Anthropic. It should be illegal for these companies, just like utilities, to deny service to anyone or any entity in good standing for dues. There is little hope for getting this through in the US where most politicians of any stripe hate the public, and…

I have a feeling, that the resolve to do something about it is waning in the EU, because of the plans to soften up the GDPR.

Re: Microsoft terminated the account VeraCrypt used to sign Windows drivers

#355

Post by nostrademons » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 7:02 PM UTC

ninjagoo wrote: post #241

zx2c4 wrote: post #39

This is the same problem I'm currently facing with WireGuard. No warning at all, no notification. One day I sign in to publish an update, and yikes, account suspended. Currently undergoing some sort of 60 days appeals process, but who knows. That's kind of crazy: what if there were some critical RCE in WireGuard, being exploited in the wild, and I needed to update users immediately? (That's just hypothetical; don't f…

It has been clear for a while that certain providers and services need to be regulated as utilities - Microsoft, Google, Apple, Visa, Mastercard, and soon Openai and Anthropic. It should be illegal for these companies, just like utilities, to deny service to anyone or any entity in good standing for dues. There is little hope for getting this through in the US where most politicians of any stripe hate the public, and…

It would not surprise me if these actions are coming at the requests of governments. Strong encryption is one of the few things that challenges their monopoly on information; they have a very strong incentive to apply political pressure to the maintainers of these projects to, well, stop maintaining the projects. We've seen this in overt actions that the EU takes; in more covert actions that the U.S. government is suspected of taking; and in the news headlines about third-world dictatorships that just shut off the Internet. Tech companies are perhaps the most convenient leverage point for these actions.

More regulation won't help here, because the regulation-maker is itself the hostile party.

What would help is full control over the supply chain. Hardware that you own, free and open-source operating systems where no single person is the bottleneck to distribution, and free software that again has no single person who is a failure point and no way to control its distribution.

Re: Microsoft terminated the account VeraCrypt used to sign Windows drivers

#356

Post by trinsic2 » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 7:03 PM UTC

superxpro12 wrote: post #240

no_time wrote: post #98

prediction: they are testing the waters. If there is enough outcry they will go "oopsie whoopsie, hehe :3 your account is restored". If there isn't enough outcry they will go forward and disable more signing keys related to things like torrent clients, VPN software, eject UBO from the edge store etc etc. Atleast now I'm a bit more certain that VC is indeed safe.

They've finally sprung their enshittification trap. Their move into "open source" was never of friendly origin. It was a business move, plain and simple. And now they're locking down Window OS, hard. Expect github and vscode to follow.

I left GitHub for GitLab because i knew this was coming.

Re: Microsoft terminated the account VeraCrypt used to sign Windows drivers

#357

Post by pnw » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 7:04 PM UTC

diath wrote: post #170

abcd_f wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more or less commonly accepted that its creator got jailed for being an arms dealer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux

Makes you wonder what kind of leverage/information you have to have to only get 25 years for admitting to being involved in 7 murders.

According to Wikipedia, the DEA gave him immunity on additional charges in return for pleading guilty and running a sting against his associates, but before the DEA knew about the murders.

Re: Microsoft terminated the account VeraCrypt used to sign Windows drivers

#358

Post by greenavocado » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

kbelder wrote: post #353

greenavocado wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This license modifier already exists for others to use (I can't post the direct links here because this site will sanction me for doing so) plus n-word dot com hosts information about the plus n-word license which purports: - The software will not be used or hosted by western corporations that promote censorship - The software will not be used or hosted by compromised individuals that promote censorship - Users of th…

Why "Western" corporations that promote censorship? Non-western censorship is allowed?

They don't care as much about things like this

Re: Microsoft terminated the account VeraCrypt used to sign Windows drivers

#359

Post by trinsic2 » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #197

sph wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll find that people that are not computer experts will take to modern Linux with much more ease than those that have complex needs, which for 90% of the people these days means that access to the Web satisfies all their needs. Moving from Windows 7 to 11 will probably be as traumatic as moving from Windows 11 to KDE, so it's an investment worth doing in my opinion.

While I agree entirely that Linux in 2026 has never been more usable… how much actual work is being put into Office and 365 tooling native on Linux? Like none. Literally the best office you MIGHT KIND OF be able to run in 2016, but probably more like 2013. Valve focused on games, that is awesome and really helpful… But there are 10,000 distros and instead of putting real resources to put even rickety bridges over MS’…

> While I agree entirely that Linux in 2026 has never been more usable… how much actual work is being put into Office and 365 tooling native on Linux?

Why the hell would you want that? Office365 is a buggy piece of nightmare.

Re: Microsoft terminated the account VeraCrypt used to sign Windows drivers

#360

Post by zelphirkalt » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

beng-nl wrote: post #280

prox wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a law that a human representative can be spoken to within 24 hours or directly when something critical happens. Also “there is no appeal possible” should be plain illegal.

I understand the sentiment, but.. do you realize how much more expensive that would make all these services? I don’t know the number. But personally I think using the services and ‘simply’ only use them if the disappearance isn’t catastrophic and have the price be low or free while it works isn’t too bad a trade-off. Admittedly that’s a big ‘if.’

Even if they somehow were so expensive, that it would no longer scale to their size, that is still not our problem and if anything, a sign that either they need to improve their systems, or simply cannot be as big as they are. Shit happens, scale down, I won't cry for them.