'Windows Recall' Preview Remains Hackable As Google Develops Similar Feature

Windows Recall was "delayed" over concerns that storing unencrypted recordings of users' activity was a security risk. But now Slashdot reader storagedude writes:The latest version of Microsoft's planned Windows Recall feature still contains data privacy and security vulnerabilities, according to a report by the Cyber Express. Security researcher Kevin Beaumont - whose work started the backlash that resulted in Recall getting delayed last month - said the most recent preview version is still hackable by Alex Hagenah's "TotalRecall" method "with the smallest of tweaks." The Windows screen recording feature could as yet be refined to fix security concerns, but some have spotted it recently in some versions of the Windows 11 24H2 release preview that will be officially released in the fall. Cyber Express (the blog of threat intelligence vendor Cyble Inc) got this official response:Asked for comment on Beaumont's findings, a Microsoft spokesperson said the company "has not officially released Recall," and referred to the updated blog post that announced the delay, which said: "Recall will now shift from a preview experience broadly available for Copilot+ PCs on June 18, 2024, to a preview available first in the Windows Insider Program (WIP) in the coming weeks." "Beyond that, Microsoft has nothing more to share," the spokesperson added. Also this week, the blog Android Authority wrote that Google is planning to introduce its own "Google AI" features to Pixel 9 smartphones. They include the ability to enhance screenshots, an "Add Me" tool for group photos - and also "a feature resembling Microsoft's controversial Recall" dubbed "Pixel Screenshots."Google's take on the feature is different and more privacy-focused: instead of automatically capturing everything you're doing, it will only work on screenshots you take yourself. When you do that, the app will add a bit of extra metadata to it, like app names, web links, etc. After that, it will be processed by a local AI, presumably the new multimodal version of Gemini Nano, which will let you search for specific screenshots just by their contents, as well as ask a bot questions about them. My take on the feature is that it's definitely a better implementation of the idea than what Microsoft created.. [B]oth of the apps ultimately serve a similar purpose and Google's implementation doesn't easily leak sensitive information... It's worth mentioning Motorola is also working on its own version of Recall - not much is known at the moment, but it seems it will be similar to Google's implementation, with no automatic saving of everything on the screen. The Verge describes the Pixel 9's Google AI as "like Microsoft Recall but a little less creepy."

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