Comments
Hacker News
Article tells you to paste
> $lid=(Get-ItemProperty 'HKCU:SOFTWAREMicrosoftIdentityCRLExtendedProperties').LID
which obviously does not work because it has all the slashes removed. Article author apparently didn't bother to proofread anything.
Or just use Linux.
by Nevin1901
Even if you fix this one, how do you know if you got all of them? How do you know they won't add more another time in some quiet patch?
Just stop already, you are in an abusive relationship. Get out. Remove windows. It's not your friend. It's your computer, you have options.
by imglorp
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.
by inventor7777
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..."
by Terr_
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...
by 0x1d7
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.
by antisthenes
> 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?
by sorenjan
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- Hacker News
- Article tells you to paste
> $lid=(Get-ItemProperty 'HKCU:SOFTWAREMicrosoftIdentityCRLExtendedProperties').LID
which obviously does not work because it has all the slashes removed. Article author apparently didn't bother to proofread anything.
- Or just use Linux.by Nevin1901
- Even if you fix this one, how do you know if you got all of them? How do you know they won't add more another time in some quiet patch?
Just stop already, you are in an abusive relationship. Get out. Remove windows. It's not your friend. It's your computer, you have options.
by imglorp - 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.
by inventor7777 - 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..."
by Terr_ - 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...
by 0x1d7 - 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.
by antisthenes - > 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?
by sorenjan