Microsoft Gave BitLocker Encryption Keys To The FBI, Report Claims

Microsoft has confirmed that it provided BitLocker recovery keys to the FBI in response to a valid legal order, giving investigators the ability to decrypt hard drives that would otherwise have been unreadable. In the case reported by Forbes, the FBI served a warrant in early 2025 related to a fraud investigation in Guam involving alleged misuse of pandemic unemployment benefits.

Microsoft complied by handing over recovery keys for three encrypted laptops that it had stored in its cloud infrastructure. The company says it receives roughly 20 such legal requests per year and will provide recovery keys where it has them and the order is valid, but in many cases it can't assist because the user never backed up keys to Microsoft's servers in the first place. While the technical reality of cloud-based key storage has been known to experts for years, this case marks the first confirmation ...