Re: EFS key recovery?

From: Alun Jones (alun@texis.com)
Date: 11/21/02 

From: alun@texis.com (Alun Jones)
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 14:57:46 GMT

In article <Oi98$vSkCHA.1616@tkmsftngp10>, "Brett" <brett@cabocabo.com> wrote:
>"Torgeir Bakken (MVP)" <Torgeir.Bakken-spam@hydro.com>
>> Note that for WinXP, Administrator is no longer a default EFS Recovery
>Agent (as> it is for Win2k).
>
>....and IMHO still should be if an agent isn't specified. It'd be a nice
>safety net.

I think that's the point, though. The 'safety net' that you talk about, is a
security risk to others.

Do not commit to EFS any files, unless you can say that you'd rather lose
access to the files than allow access to someone unauthorised. The EFS system
is supposed to "fail over" safely - i.e. if something goes wrong with the
operating system, the files should be irretrievable. That's part of the
design. If you use EFS, you must acknowledge that you will lose any files
protected by it if you lose the recovery key - and one good way to lose the
recovery key is for the system to get in an unbootable state - a disk crash,
say.

One ideal for EFS is to protect files against a thief who steals your hard
drive. If there was a way for you to recover your files after your system
becomes unbootable, then there would similarly be a way (the same way) for the
thief to recover your files from that stolen hard drive.

Alun.
~~~~

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