Something this article glosses over is the fact that Microsoft knew all of the web URLs he was visiting. I don't know if that's because he was dumb enough to sign into Edge with his Microsoft account or if they were collecting that a different way, but the GDID wouldn't have been nearly as useful without that info.

Year of the Linux desktop anyone?

Hacker

Uses windows

He got what he fucking deserved

ELI5?

The complaint quotes a Microsoft representative describing the GDID as “a persistent, device-level identifier designed to uniquely identify an installation of a Windows operating system on a device, either a physical device (e.g., a mobile phone or laptop) or virtual machine, across certain Microsoft services and scenarios”

A Global Device ID (GDID) is a permanent, unique digital fingerprint that Microsoft automatically assigns to your computer when you install Windows or sign into a Microsoft account.

Don't forget the unique identifier of Edge and Chrome.

Goym Device ID

Then there’s activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.

I guess this is why people always said it was impossible to remove the watermark that appears when you are not activated, when it was rolled out many years ago.

Defeating the reasons for activation might've lead the more tech-savvy to figuring out the nature of the identifiers being sent for activation and seeing where else they are sent.

why would a hacker use windows?

Does MS track what you do in Edge and Windows, yes. Does Google track you in Crome and any app of theirs, yes. Does Apple track everything you do on their devices, yes. Does meta, twitter, all social media sites track the fuck out of you, also yes.

the fucked up thing is this GDID thing apparently also show up for VM. So that would mean any VM and even a Quebe?

Fuck microsoft

My company is moving to Windows 11, I had one of my service desk teammates tell me that for an IT support person I'm very critical of change

Before Windows 11 I was critical of change because every change came with no new training for my team and a giant email to the company explaining very lazily about the changes and with the same text at the end of every email.. "Any problems call the service desk".

Now we've lost active directory.. Now I'm in a position where an incredibly incompetent IT security have restricted our access to intune and Entra and then the business wants me to still perform my daily duties as normal.

Upside is that same IT security is getting removed in the next few weeks.

Probably to be replaced by someone else even worse.

I just want to learn how to use Entra and Intune.. Everything Microsoft touches turns to shit.

Active directory just worked.. It was built when people at Microsoft actually knew how the operating system worked.. None of those people are still at Microsoft..