> Microsoft provided the FBI with the history of IP addresses tied to that specific GDID.
This article, and most articles about this, doesn't explain where FBI got that GDID from. Ok, Microsoft has a list of IP addresses that has been used by a computer with a certain GDID, but FBI needs to get the GDID in the first place, and then try to bind that to a person.
I found another article that explains the process a bit better:
> Stokes got caught because he used the same Windows device for everything, and the GDID stitched all of it back together after the fact.
> Scattered Spider members phoned the jewelry retailer’s IT help desk from Google Voice numbers, posed as locked out employees, and talked support staff into resetting three accounts, two with administrator privileges. From there they installed a tunneling tool called ngrok to get past the retailer’s network defenses, moved roughly 77 gigabytes of data to Amazon cloud storage using ngrok [...]
> Investigators later subpoenaed ngrok and found the account used in the attack had been created on May 12, 2025, at 19:21 UTC from a VPN proxy IP address run by Tzulo, a hosting provider. The IP was a dead end. VPN proxies do that. But the GDID is built different.
> Microsoft’s records showed that at that exact same minute, a Windows device carrying GDID g:6755467234350028 had visited the ngrok signup page. Three hours later, the same GDID visited the retailer’s own website, through the same Tzulo proxy address used to set up the ngrok account. It gave the FBI a device, that don’t rotate the way VPN exit nodes do.
They didn’t. They went to ngrok and asked for all the data at the point of signup. They then looked to find the any of that data at the second site. In this case they had two identical data points - the GDID and the IP address.
This seems like something that should be easy to confirm, but I haven't seen anyone do it. Do they keep a database of every website visit all Edge users make?
Speculation: if you turn on browser sync so you can have your open tabs and history on different computers, that stuff will be on MS' cloud with your consent, with whatever E2EE they have or claim to have.
But it would be very foolish for a blackhat to turn on browser sync...
I got banned from all computers in my secondary school and from taking the IT GCSE; final school exam in the UK.
Using the school news paper shared account, I copied the bullies coursework in to the public share, made changes to the coursework on my own user account and then copied it back to their work folder using the school news papers account.
MS Office keeps an "Last edited by" field so I got caught. If I had used the school newspaper account to make the edit I wouldn't of been caught, rookie error. I too discovered a DCOM in the Windows 98 help file that revealed all the hidden shares on the network which scared the school. This was 2004 and I was 15.
Oh and the time, I bought a BB gun off someone at school. I was a librarian in the schools library and showed it off someone of the older grade year. The head librarian confiscated it and reported it to the headmaster. The guy then gave me a copy of Q3A and I stuck with violence the video-game way.
Data Description for Browsing History data type
Microsoft browser data subtype: Information about Address bar and Search box performance on the device
* Text typed in Address bar and Search box
* Service response time
* Autocompleted text, if there was an autocomplete
* Navigation suggestions provided based on local history and favorites
* Browser ID
* URLs (may include search terms)
* Page title and notification text
They claim it was an ngrok account that was used to host an endpoint used in the compromise, tied to a microsoft account / gdid that was passed when ngrok software was downloaded from the "microsoft store".
It's not one homogeneous people reacting to different OSes. It's different people, and they react differently when somebody else's OS does something vs when their OS does something. Windows users don't care or feel locked in because it's the only OS they've known and they depend on it. Linux users expect this type of behavior from Windows, but they can't do more than switching themselves which they already have. Were Linux to do something similar, you remove the offending piece of software.
Interesting, generally Microsoft bypasses the hosts file name resolution for various MSFT domains. Curious that these were not included (if it works, which I assume the mitigation does).
I think it's likely that Microsoft is running a process to correlate "new" GDIDs to old ones, ex:
"Oh look, this one has almost all the serial numbers of components and attached-devices as that other one, it's probably the same computer with a fresh install, let's make a note of that..."
I agree, tracking data via unique identifiers is evil incarnate, unless it's Google or VC-backed adtech doing it, because how else will they make money having architected their entire businesses around it.
But it is regenerated by reinstalling. So I suspect that its less fingerprint based and more of an in disk IDs thing. Which goes back to if you clear the right things while the system is not running you might be able to change it
>Every finding here was reproduced on a real Windows 11 Pro VM (build 26200). Nothing is theoretical. See docs/technical-writeup.md for the evidence, tagged by confidence level.
That's sounds nice and all, but everything about it, from "Nothing is theoretical" to "evidence, tagged by confidence level" goes out the window when you find claude as one of the commit authors, and the content is clearly copy pasted output from claude with very little editing. Worse yet, one of the sources he cites is also clearly AI output.
I'm not even against the use of AI here. I would rather see it clearly say either "this is what claude found after I told it to investigate" or "yes this is generated by claude, but I independently verified each of the points myself".
Windows 10 LTSC IOT will be the last Windows I ever use.
As I grow older, I simply do not have the patience or the will to do all these workarounds and tweaks to my OS to turn it from a piece of barely-working corporate spyware into something that I can call a productive tool.
It also seems like interacting with the OS is on its way out anyway, as most people essentially interact with computers via the browser (essentially a different sandboxed OS altogether), whether on desktop or mobile device.
If you care about privacy, you simply cannot use Windows. Microsoft has made it clear over the last decade (if not longer) that they have a vested interest in compromising your ability to use software without exploiting and monetizing data about your usage.
Microsoft is a post-privacy corporation. Eventually, we really have to stop acting so shocked about this sort of thing from them.
I think the difference is that, on Windows, there are background services that constantly ping Microsoft with the device ID. A device ID on its own is not really harmful if it's not exposed to the internet.
Right, the danger here isn't stable unique data itself--there's already plenty of that--but the OS "telemetry" which steals [0] it and reports to Big-Brother along with too much other betraying information. Every site you visit, every program you run, the serial numbers of all your hardware, etc. Even if the GDID were totally absent, it would still be a correlate-able privacy nightmare.
Ultimately there's no informed consent here: The average consumer is disbelieving and surprised if you tell them what kinds of stuff Microsoft has/can put into a dossier. Nobody thinks: "Ah, Edge on a fresh Windows install, I'm glad Microsoft knows every site I visit, and can tell I'm a friend with someone because we use the same bluetooth speaker."
[0] It seems wrong to use the verb "leaks" when it's so obviously intentional.
I mean, there's a ton of unique identifiers on machines already tied to hardware and disks, but that must be a systemd thing since my Devuan machine does not have it.
But given there's no cloud accounts on linux I would imagine it's trivially changed just like a NIC's MAC
Also, seems unlikely it would be used for any single-signon with cloud services.
There are _some_ cloud accounts for linux such as Ubuntu One, which I would fear could have similar identification capabilities if ever forced by to do so by a 3-letter agency
The performative outrage about the GDID is quite comical in the context that everyone continues to be mum about Google Chrome, a browser explicitly designed to hoover up as much data as possible about you, even having been caught doing it in Incognito Mode [1], all while touting "privacy" features; which means no one besides Google is allowed to do it.
> Microsoft provided the FBI with the history of IP addresses tied to that specific GDID.
This article, and most articles about this, doesn't explain where FBI got that GDID from. Ok, Microsoft has a list of IP addresses that has been used by a computer with a certain GDID, but FBI needs to get the GDID in the first place, and then try to bind that to a person.
I found another article that explains the process a bit better:
> Stokes got caught because he used the same Windows device for everything, and the GDID stitched all of it back together after the fact.
> Scattered Spider members phoned the jewelry retailer’s IT help desk from Google Voice numbers, posed as locked out employees, and talked support staff into resetting three accounts, two with administrator privileges. From there they installed a tunneling tool called ngrok to get past the retailer’s network defenses, moved roughly 77 gigabytes of data to Amazon cloud storage using ngrok [...]
> Investigators later subpoenaed ngrok and found the account used in the attack had been created on May 12, 2025, at 19:21 UTC from a VPN proxy IP address run by Tzulo, a hosting provider. The IP was a dead end. VPN proxies do that. But the GDID is built different.
> Microsoft’s records showed that at that exact same minute, a Windows device carrying GDID g:6755467234350028 had visited the ngrok signup page. Three hours later, the same GDID visited the retailer’s own website, through the same Tzulo proxy address used to set up the ngrok account. It gave the FBI a device, that don’t rotate the way VPN exit nodes do.
https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/07/10/you-cant-fully-disa...
Although this doesn't explain where Microsoft got that traffic data from. How do Microsoft know which sites a computer visit?
They didn’t. They went to ngrok and asked for all the data at the point of signup. They then looked to find the any of that data at the second site. In this case they had two identical data points - the GDID and the IP address.
They make the default web browser on Windows, and that sends your browsing data if you don't disable its telemetry.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48921595
This seems like something that should be easy to confirm, but I haven't seen anyone do it. Do they keep a database of every website visit all Edge users make?
Speculation: if you turn on browser sync so you can have your open tabs and history on different computers, that stuff will be on MS' cloud with your consent, with whatever E2EE they have or claim to have.
But it would be very foolish for a blackhat to turn on browser sync...
I got banned from all computers in my secondary school and from taking the IT GCSE; final school exam in the UK.
Using the school news paper shared account, I copied the bullies coursework in to the public share, made changes to the coursework on my own user account and then copied it back to their work folder using the school news papers account.
MS Office keeps an "Last edited by" field so I got caught. If I had used the school newspaper account to make the edit I wouldn't of been caught, rookie error. I too discovered a DCOM in the Windows 98 help file that revealed all the hidden shares on the network which scared the school. This was 2004 and I was 15.
Oh and the time, I bought a BB gun off someone at school. I was a librarian in the schools library and showed it off someone of the older grade year. The head librarian confiscated it and reported it to the headmaster. The guy then gave me a copy of Q3A and I stuck with violence the video-game way.
The question you should be asking is: why would Microsoft not do this?
I’m a fan of technical facts coming from technical analysis, not armchair speculation about motives.
It's called telemetry. It means Windows sends data back to Microsoft about what you're doing.
Have some light reading:
"required" spyware: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-d...
"optional" (but on by default) spyware: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/optional-d...
This is my favorite:
I'd take all of this with a cup of salt due to law enforcement's use of parallel construction in tech cases.
They claim it was an ngrok account that was used to host an endpoint used in the compromise, tied to a microsoft account / gdid that was passed when ngrok software was downloaded from the "microsoft store".
That wouldn't explain how they connected the GDID to the visit to the retailers website
> Three hours later, the same GDID visited the retailer’s own website, through the same Tzulo proxy address used to set up the ngrok account.
I cannot believe people tolerate this kind of behavior from such a large company with a huge market.
It does make me wonder if people would react differently if Linux or Apple did the same thing.
It's not one homogeneous people reacting to different OSes. It's different people, and they react differently when somebody else's OS does something vs when their OS does something. Windows users don't care or feel locked in because it's the only OS they've known and they depend on it. Linux users expect this type of behavior from Windows, but they can't do more than switching themselves which they already have. Were Linux to do something similar, you remove the offending piece of software.
Better start believing it; Google Chrome has a 71% market share.
Interesting, generally Microsoft bypasses the hosts file name resolution for various MSFT domains. Curious that these were not included (if it works, which I assume the mitigation does).
https://petri.com/windows-10-ignoring-hosts-file-specific-na...
I think it's likely that Microsoft is running a process to correlate "new" GDIDs to old ones, ex:
"Oh look, this one has almost all the serial numbers of components and attached-devices as that other one, it's probably the same computer with a fresh install, let's make a note of that..."
I agree, tracking data via unique identifiers is evil incarnate, unless it's Google or VC-backed adtech doing it, because how else will they make money having architected their entire businesses around it.
I have a sneaking suspicion that that ID can be deleted either with a specific service not running or with Windows powered off.
it is generated from identifiers on device by a remote microsoft system where it is stored ..
But it is regenerated by reinstalling. So I suspect that its less fingerprint based and more of an in disk IDs thing. Which goes back to if you clear the right things while the system is not running you might be able to change it
>Every finding here was reproduced on a real Windows 11 Pro VM (build 26200). Nothing is theoretical. See docs/technical-writeup.md for the evidence, tagged by confidence level.
That's sounds nice and all, but everything about it, from "Nothing is theoretical" to "evidence, tagged by confidence level" goes out the window when you find claude as one of the commit authors, and the content is clearly copy pasted output from claude with very little editing. Worse yet, one of the sources he cites is also clearly AI output.
I'm not even against the use of AI here. I would rather see it clearly say either "this is what claude found after I told it to investigate" or "yes this is generated by claude, but I independently verified each of the points myself".
Windows 10 LTSC IOT will be the last Windows I ever use.
As I grow older, I simply do not have the patience or the will to do all these workarounds and tweaks to my OS to turn it from a piece of barely-working corporate spyware into something that I can call a productive tool.
It also seems like interacting with the OS is on its way out anyway, as most people essentially interact with computers via the browser (essentially a different sandboxed OS altogether), whether on desktop or mobile device.
If you care about privacy, you simply cannot use Windows. Microsoft has made it clear over the last decade (if not longer) that they have a vested interest in compromising your ability to use software without exploiting and monetizing data about your usage.
Microsoft is a post-privacy corporation. Eventually, we really have to stop acting so shocked about this sort of thing from them.
Or just use Linux.
That's exactly the advice at the end.
/etc/machine-id also exists
And it’s easily altered.
It can still be correlated with past IDs by countless other methods in order to keep tracking you further.
So, uhh, fuck windows and use Linux if you value your security and privacy?
this is a Windows 11 thing only?
when LTSC exists why are people using W11 ?
It's present on one of my windows 10 LTSC VMs but not the other, so not sure how it got there.
windows 11 and LTSC aren't mutually exclusive.
wow.. How is this not a bigger deal
Obvious workaround to get off windows and use Linux…
But do any popular linux distributions use an identifier? Ubuntu, Kali, Mint, Arch, etc?
It seems an attractive way for devs to work out telemetry. Awful in reality; but I imagine attractive.
At least Debian and Ubuntu have /etc/machine-id, presumably easily changed - but it’s there.
I think the difference is that, on Windows, there are background services that constantly ping Microsoft with the device ID. A device ID on its own is not really harmful if it's not exposed to the internet.
Right, the danger here isn't stable unique data itself--there's already plenty of that--but the OS "telemetry" which steals [0] it and reports to Big-Brother along with too much other betraying information. Every site you visit, every program you run, the serial numbers of all your hardware, etc. Even if the GDID were totally absent, it would still be a correlate-able privacy nightmare.
Ultimately there's no informed consent here: The average consumer is disbelieving and surprised if you tell them what kinds of stuff Microsoft has/can put into a dossier. Nobody thinks: "Ah, Edge on a fresh Windows install, I'm glad Microsoft knows every site I visit, and can tell I'm a friend with someone because we use the same bluetooth speaker."
[0] It seems wrong to use the verb "leaks" when it's so obviously intentional.
I mean, there's a ton of unique identifiers on machines already tied to hardware and disks, but that must be a systemd thing since my Devuan machine does not have it.
But given there's no cloud accounts on linux I would imagine it's trivially changed just like a NIC's MAC
Also, seems unlikely it would be used for any single-signon with cloud services.
I'm guessing Devuan still has /var/lib/dbus/machine-id.
TIL.
Exists on Slackware64 15.0 but Does not.There are _some_ cloud accounts for linux such as Ubuntu One, which I would fear could have similar identification capabilities if ever forced by to do so by a 3-letter agency
The performative outrage about the GDID is quite comical in the context that everyone continues to be mum about Google Chrome, a browser explicitly designed to hoover up as much data as possible about you, even having been caught doing it in Incognito Mode [1], all while touting "privacy" features; which means no one besides Google is allowed to do it.
[1] https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/google-forced-to-de...
Not a fan of whaddaboutism.
It’s much easier to switch browsers than operating systems, especially if you have apps that require windows.
Besides, there is no obligation to be equally outraged about all things.