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The condemnation of Microsoft’s Recall feature for Copilot+ AI PCs was swift and damning. While it’s meant to let you find anything you’ve ever done on your PC, it also involves taking constant screenshots of your PC, and critics noticed that information wasn’t being stored securely. Microsoft ended up delaying its rollout for Windows Insider beta testers, and in June it announced more stringent security measures: It’s making Recall opt-in by default; it will require Windows Hello biometric authentication; and it will encrypt the screenshot database.

Today, ahead of the impending launch of the next major Windows 11 launch in November, Microsoft offered up more details about Recall’s security and privacy measures. The company says Recall’s snapshots and related data will be protected by VBS Enclaves, which it describes as a “software-based trusted execution environment (TEE) inside a host application.” Users will have to actively turn Recall on during Windows setup, and they can also remove the feature entirely. Microsoft also reiterated that encryption will be a major part of the entire Recall experience, and it will be using Windows Hello to interact with every aspect of the feature, including changing settings.

“Recall also protects against malware through rate-limiting and anti-hammering measures,” David Weston, Microsoft’s VP of OS and enterprise security, wrote in a blog post today. “Recall currently supports PIN as a fallback method only after Recall is configured, and this is to avoid data loss if a secure sensor is damaged.”

When it comes to privacy controls, Weston reiterates that “you are always in control.” By default, Recall won’t save private browsing data across supported browsers like Edge, Chrome and Firefox. The feature will also have sensitive content filtering on by default to keep things like passwords and credit card numbers from being stored.

Microsoft

Microsoft says Recall has also been reviewed by an unnamed third-party vendor, who performed a penetration test and security design overview. The Microsoft Offensive Research and Security Engineering team (MORSE) has also been testing the feature for months. 

Given the near instant backlash, it’s not too surprising to see Microsoft being extra cautious with Recall’s eventual rollout. The real question is how the the company didn’t foresee the initial criticisms, which included the Recall database being easily accessible from other local accounts. Thanks to the use of encryption and additional security, that should no longer be an issue, but it makes me wonder what else Microsoft missed early on.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/microsoft-explains-how-its-tackling-security-and-privacy-for-recall-170059383.html?src=rss

Blizzard is diving into the StarCraft shooter well once again, after two previous titles were canceled. This information comes from a forthcoming book about the developer by games journalist Jason Schreier and was discussed during a recent IGN podcast.

This time around, veteran developer Dan Hay is leading the effort to translate the world of StarCraft into a shooter. Hay certainly has the right pedigree for the job. He’s been involved with the Far Cry franchise since Far Cry 3, eventually becoming creative director of the series. Hay joined up with Blizzard to oversee the long-gestating survival game Odyssey before it was unceremoniously canceled. This is the first we’ve heard of him since.

We don’t know anything about the game he’s working on now, beyond it being a StarCraft shooter. Past as prologue, it’ll probably be canceled sometime in 2029.

To that end, StarCraft-themed shooters have had a rocky history. First there was StarCraft: Ghost, which spent years in development limbo before being sent to the trash heap. The game eventually leaked online, a full 14 years after being canceled.

After that, Blizzard started developing something called Ares, which ended up being a StarCraft FPS. It was reportedly fairly far along in development before getting scrapped and, according to Kotaku, was shaping up to be “quite good.” Blizzard must have disagreed, as it went to a farm upstate back in 2019.

Who knows what will happen with this one. Best case scenario? It gets finished and we all have a great time blasting away swarms of arthropodal aliens sometime in the next few years. In the meantime, both StarCraft: Remastered and StarCraft II hit PC Game Pass on November 5.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/blizzard-is-trying-to-make-a-starcraft-shooter-again-for-the-third-time-153950275.html?src=rss