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Stealing everything you’ve ever typed or viewed on your own Windows PC is now possible with two lines of code — inside the Copilot+ Recall disaster. (doublepulsar.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

218 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Q. Is this really as harmful as you think?

A. Go to your parents house, your grandparents house etc and look at their Windows PC, look at the installed software in the past year, and try to use the device. Run some antivirus scans. There’s no way this implementation doesn’t end in tears — there’s a reason there’s a trillion dollar security industry, and that most problems revolve around malware and endpoints.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 months ago (2 children)

THIS IS NOT CURRENTLY RUNNING ON MY WINDOWS COMPUTER, right?

This obvious first question hasn’t been clarified (maybe by one comment in this thread, but not in the article)

[–] [email protected] 43 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

From The Verge’s obsequious article:

Recall won’t work with every Windows 11 computer. You’ll have to buy one of several fresh new “Copilot Plus PCs” powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X Elite chips, which have the neural processing unit (NPU) required for Recall to work.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (3 children)

And from the article in the OP:

I got ahold of the Copilot+ software and got it working on a system without an NPU about a week ago,

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

They are using that to sell NPU bullshit to the stupid people crazy enough to be excited by it.

Then down the road they'll push it in an update for everyone, I wager.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

What even is a NPU, if it’s not necessary for the software to work?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Most of the newer CPU's have an NPU already, Microsoft just set a higher performance requirement for NPUs to be officially labeled an "AI PC" which they are pushing hard.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

You'll have the icon on your taskbar if it is. You can also hit Meta+J to check

[+] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I think that's just regular Copilot (without the plus). This is a newer version, at least that's what this quote from the article leads me to believe:

I got ahold [sic] of the Copilot+ software and got it working on a system without an NPU about a week ago

The regular Copilot (without the plus) that sits in the taskbar was rolled out in an update about a month or two ago.

Also, this part of the article gives a method to check if it's running:

Q. How do you obtain the database files?

A. They’re just files in AppData, in the new CoreAIPlatform folder.

Unfortunately there are at least two AppData folders (three to be exact, but one of them is rarely used), and it doesn't specify whether it's %APPDATA% or %LOCALAPPDATA%, but I just checked on my Windows machine (Win11 with all updates installed, including Copilot), and I can find no such folder in either of these paths.

EDIT: the video in this toot clearly shows the location of the database folder, and it's in %LOCALAPPDATA%, which makes sense given that it's stuff that's not supposed to leave your device.

EDIT2: this tweet seems to confirm that this is indeed a feature that's only shipped on certain new devices, which need to be specially certified because Copilot+ requires hardware support.