Windows Recall takes a screenshot every five seconds. Cybersecurity researchers say the system is simple to abuse—and one ethical hacker has already built a tool to show how easy it really is.

When Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed the new Windows AI tool that can answer questions about your web browsing and laptop use, he said one of the “magical” things about it was that the data doesn’t leave your laptop; the Windows Recall system takes screenshots of your activity every five seconds and saves them on the device. But security experts say that data may not stay there for long.

Two weeks ahead of Recall’s launch on new Copilot+ PCs on June 18, security researchers have demonstrated how preview versions of the tool store the screenshots in an unencrypted database. The researchers say the data could easily be hoovered up by an attacker. And now, in a warning about how Recall could be abused by criminal hackers, Alex Hagenah, a cybersecurity strategist and ethical hacker, has released a demo tool that can automatically extract and display everything Recall records on a laptop.

Dubbed TotalRecall—yes, after the 1990 sci-fi film—the tool can pull all the information that Recall saves into its main database on a Windows laptop. “The database is unencrypted. It’s all plain text,” Hagenah says.⁩ Since Microsoft revealed Recall in mid-May, security researchers have repeatedly compared it to spyware or stalkerware that can track everything you do on your device. “It’s a Trojan 2.0 really, built in,” Hagenah says, adding that he built TotalRecall—which he’s releasing on GitHub—in order to show what is possible and to encourage Microsoft to make changes before Recall fully launches.

  • mosiacmango@lemm.eeEnglish
    291·
    6 months ago

    Nmap is a “hacker tool” and all it does is ask computers what ports they have open, something they are set to advertise to the world.

    This is a “hacker tool” in the sense that it is accessing data in an unintended way, in the same contect as nmap using protocols intended to communicate for a set purpose to built a list of possible attack vectors.

    • chaosCruiserEnglish
      124·
      6 months ago

      So when I walk past some bicycles parked outside of a store, and simply use my eyes to determine if they have locks, I’m essentially a hacker.

      • prole@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        12·
        6 months ago

        There’s a word for that, it’s called “casing.”

        Obviously not “hacking,” unless they’re locked up by a computer or some shit.

        A hacker using software like that to test vulnerabilities seems similar to me in some ways.