Microsoft Provided Private BitLocker Recovery Keys to the FBI

Microsoft has confirmed that the company complied with the request of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to give away BitLocker encryption keys for unlocking customer data on three laptops. According to Forbes, early last year FBI handed a warrant to Microsoft for recovery keys that are protecting three laptops from the Guam area, which were running Microsoft’s BitLocker encryption on their drives. For those unaware, BitLocker uses 128 and 256-bit AES encryption over entire drive volumes, so the data becomes unusable once it is out of user’s hands. Only a generated key can unlock the data with the exact combination, making it impossible for third-parties to unveil what is happening inside the storage volume.

However, now Microsoft spokesperson Charles Chamberlayne has confirmed for The Verge that the every BitLocker key generated for the local device usage is also stored in Microsoft’s online storage server. He continued elaborating that “customers can choose to…