Vista, Vista, Vista, Vista, Vista and Vista

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Caged said:
Is the old school "add font" dialog still there :p

Aye, wtf is up with that? I thought I was the only person in the whole wide world to ever actually use that dialog :D Talk about hailing back to windows 95 lol.
 
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Time warp!

fontsdialog.gif
 
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Not really, I dont think Microsoft would be that stupid. It seems to me that Government officials who know nothing about software etc are just getting their knickers in a twist after someone chucked in a rumour-nade and ran.
 
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back door or not, they would still have to get through any firewall or other protection you had running on your computer. If peeps are that worried then just dont connect to the internet at all. The government cant use a back door if there is no way of getting to it.
 
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Combat squirrel said:
is no one concerned about this back door talk with the goverment ? how will we know for sure ? im not getting vista until I know NO ONE will be lookin in on my pc
No that backdoor crap was a load of media hype/FUD.

ben_j_davis said:
back door or not, they would still have to get through any firewall or other protection you had running on your computer. If peeps are that worried then just dont connect to the internet at all. The government cant use a back door if there is no way of getting to it.
Governments advisors (note, not the actual government but big shots at Cambridge University) were suggesting that Microsoft place a _physical access_ backdoor in Vista to bypass the BitLocker security. No where was it suggested that a remotely exploitable backdoor should be added.

Microsoft won't comply with it though because BitLocker merely prevents somebody taking the hard drive out of a stolen PC, placing it into another and reading the files. Law enforcement agencies can still gain access by brute force password cracking of the Windows user accounts (and note a certain UK government agency in Cheltenham can do this in a matter of days on even on the strongest of passwords.) Hell, what's stopping them just cloning the TPM key anyway? Nothing. TPM is not rock solid security. I imagine some of the folks at Cheltenham were laughing at the Cambridge professor who suggested a backdoor was needed :p

Also BitLocker will only be available on PCs that have a TPM module and to be honest I can't see them catching on in the enthusiast motherboard market (e.g. Asus, Abit et al).
 
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Combat squirrel said:
is no one concerned about this back door talk with the goverment ? how will we know for sure ? im not getting vista until I know NO ONE will be lookin in on my pc
No, Microsoft have already said they have not and will not put a back door into any OS
 
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Probably Home Premium for me. The only feature for the Ultimate that interests me is the game performance tweaker. But I'm not going to pay loads of money just for that considering there are probably good freeware alternatives. Plus I can probably do all of that manually if I really wanted to.

I'm hoping Home Premium will be sold at a similar price to XP Home and the basic version will be sold cheaper. But there's a good chance that won't be the case.
 
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NathanE said:
Also BitLocker will only be available on PCs that have a TPM module and to be honest I can't see them catching on in the enthusiast motherboard market (e.g. Asus, Abit et al).

Any links to further info re BitLocker? It's a point of interest for us as disk encryption is policy. Many apps out there aren't that good though I haven't looked at PGPs whole disk encryption yet.
 
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NathanE said:
Microsoft won't comply with it though because BitLocker merely prevents somebody taking the hard drive out of a stolen PC, placing it into another and reading the files. Law enforcement agencies can still gain access by brute force password cracking of the Windows user accounts (and note a certain UK government agency in Cheltenham can do this in a matter of days on even on the strongest of passwords.) Hell, what's stopping them just cloning the TPM key anyway? Nothing. TPM is not rock solid security. I imagine some of the folks at Cheltenham were laughing at the Cambridge professor who suggested a backdoor was needed :p

So is it not very strong encryption then? I was under the impression that there is encryption software freely available (eg. TrueCrypt) which cannot be defeated, assuming a simple password isn't used naturally. It would take rather more than a few days to brute force crack the password - more like years. Presumably the Cambridge professor is thinking along these lines when he suggested a backdoor.
 
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I think there's confusion between passwords and keys. If you can log into the PC, you can access your files - else it'd be fairly daft encryption. Your password is only likely to be around 8 characters, and that most definitely won't take years to brute force.
 
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dirtydog said:
So is it not very strong encryption then? I was under the impression that there is encryption software freely available (eg. TrueCrypt) which cannot be defeated, assuming a simple password isn't used naturally. It would take rather more than a few days to brute force crack the password - more like years. Presumably the Cambridge professor is thinking along these lines when he suggested a backdoor.
It's can only be considered "strong" for as long as the TPM key is kept private. People with the right tools and know-how could get to the key very easily.

It would take years on a standard PC to brute force, yes. But that government agency has the largest supercomputer in Europe, hence only a matter of days.
Domo said:
Any links to further info re BitLocker? It's a point of interest for us as disk encryption is policy. Many apps out there aren't that good though I haven't looked at PGPs whole disk encryption yet.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/library/c61f2a12-8ae6-4957-b031-97b4d762cf31.mspx
 
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