Microsoft has insisted that its forthcoming Windows
Vista operating system will not have a ‘back door’ that can be used
by police forces to get access to encrypted files.
Reports had suggested that the British government was in
discussions with Microsoft over the provision of a method of
bypassing normal authentication to gain access to a system without
the PC user knowing.
But Microsoft has debunked the suggestion that it might go along
with such a suggestion, and insisted that it will not put back
doors into Windows.
Ironically, the need for the back door has arisen because
Microsoft has hardened its security for Vista. One aspect of the
operating system, BitLocker Drive Encryption, encrypts data to
protect it if the computer is lost or stolen, which could make it
harder for law enforcement agencies to get access to data on seized
computers.
Microsoft said back doors “are simply not acceptable” and
doubted that anyone on its team would be willing to implement and
test the back door. To emphasise the point, one Microsoft developer
and cryptographer even wrote "Over my dead body” on a corporate
blog.
I hope that this really is Microsoft’s position, and not that in
order to gain a few lucrative public sector contracts, there is an
unrecorded, unminuted agreement for the development of such a back
door.