Could they do it? Deactivate Windows licenses, block Cloud services, access to Office 365 and whatnot?
It would be the biggest self-own in history but apparently the yanks are into that these days.
That, yes, and maybe Microsoft wouldn’t be the one pulling the trigger? I mean, with prism the NSA had access to most internet traffic between the US and the rest of the world, I think. Who knows what mechanisms there are in place, and what this government might decide to do?
Microsoft has the ability to do this if they really wanted to. It would completely destroy their business if they did, though, so they won’t. I mean, who would keep using Microsoft products if the company was willing to just take it away from you at a moment’s notice?
The US government cannot do it so easily. They’d have to order Microsoft to do so. Microsoft would resist and take it to court. The US Court system makes a LOT of really fucked up rulings, but the one thing they do reliably is side with big business. I’m inclined to think that in this hypothetical showdown, the courts would side with Microsoft.
Maybe if we ask nicely.
Yes, technically they could cause massive disruptions. Not likely they will.
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They would not get paid.
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Europe would suddenly have a very good reason to spend billions of euro on funding competitors.
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Microsoft is an Eldritch hydra monstrosity. I think it has become its own civilization. I think it’s so large that it just exists as a self sustaining chaos phenomena. I don’t think the organization can make a decision. One department of thousands makes a decision. And they all jostle about breaking each other’s shit every other day.
Stopping Windows from running, probably not. MS could stop sending updates and could deactivate it, but it would mostly keep running. And, if any EU/Russian systems were not connected to the internet (yes, this sort of thing still happens in 2025), nothing MS did would matter. Office/Azure and other cloud based services are more vulnerable. Yes, Microsoft could geo-fence those services such that they did nor work if you were coming from an IP address in EU/Russia. Though, the simple workaround for this is to install a VPN. And given US sanctions on Russia, this is probably happening right now anyway.
As much as the tin-foil hat crowd likes to think about MS having some master control switch, it’s incredibly unlikely. The problem with backdoors is that hackers are constantly looking for ways to attack systems, especially Windows. If there was some sort of master “off switch” baked into the code, it’s likely some one would have stumbled upon it by now. Even if it’s that well hidden, it’s a “one use” item with high reputational damage attached. Stop and consider for a moment, what happens when that kill switch gets used? It’s going to be picked up on. People record internet traffic for fun. As soon as that kill command went out, security researchers, the world over, would be dissecting logs to find the command, and then it would be reversed engineered. That MS had such a kill switch in their codebase would cause massive distrust in MS software going forward. No one would want to take the risk of having that kill switch running in their environment, certainly not on anything critical. Also, given how bad people are at updating Windows, we’d probably see a lot of systems killed by hackers just doing hacker things. Since the versions with the kill code would be know, you’d get bored teenagers searching Shodan for vulnerable systems and sending the kill command for fun. And all of this would be “Microsoft’s fault” for having the backdoor. It would be a PR nightmare. And since everyone would now know what the kill command looked like, anyone who mattered would install filters to block it at the firewall. So, it got used once, caused some damage with a lot of damage to MS’s reputation but is now neutralized. Was it worth it? Probably not to Microsoft.
Without security updates it would quickly be a nightmare to use windows.
Anyone remembers installing xp from a CD? It didn’t have security updates, and accepted all kind of trash right in from the internet right away by default lol.
I mean, yes, but there are ways around it. Windows could have a public key embebed somewhere and the private counterpart gives access, the command could depend on the time it’s received, so it’s never the same and without the private key it’s impossible to reproduce, and the Killswitch could be non-instantaneous, combine all of that and you have a Killswitch that:
- It’s very hard for you to realize something happened, because by the time it happens the trigger is lost in a sea of other requests
- Even if you were to fine comb through all of that and spot it, it’s encrypted
- Even if you were to resend it it would do nothing, because the time has changed
- Even if you managed to find the public key and decrypt it the actual content could be inocuos, like a random looking string
- As long as the private key is secure enough it would be impossible to crack
- Even if you somehow managed to crack it and send anything you want to the PC you don’t know the protocol to generate the random strings and you only have the one example of the message (which no longer works)
- Even if several people did this the content could truly be random (in the common sense of the word, i.e. pseudo-random), since Microsoft controls the RNG on Windows they can use that to ensure that random data gets generated equally
And I’m not even a cryptographer, people who come up with new encryption protocols can surely do a lot better than my naive example above which would make it almost impossible for someone to figure out.
Sure, but they like money, so not happening.
They can send all of their online services like Office 365 and Copilot, as well as sales or registration of Windows very quickly. I wish they would! I’d love to see Linux and Libreoffice take over, and maybe a new European player on the market. That would be a boon for consumers worldwide.
Don’t threaten me with a good time!
Yes, no problem with those rented licences.
Haven’t used a Microsoft product at home in years, at work though is a very different story. Everything is Microsoft and its horrible and frustrating.
Yes but not legally. They are also legally bound to EU laws, which would protect the clients that bpught the software. But! Just like plenty of companies pulled out of Russia, if the US does not care and decides ro enable this behavior then they could do it without too much trouble.
But I doubt this would happen, the EU is a big part of their income, and money is what they care about.
They could block Windows licenses going forward, but it wouldn’t impact all the activations already done. Windows is not a subscription.
Despite their best efforts.
Give it 3 years… “Your operating system license has expired, renew now for $150/year.”
Unfortunately for them, my relationship with Microsoft expired last year.
As surely as you could set $100,000 of your own money on on fire, yeah.
Absolutely
