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?
What they did was the opposite: ask Microsoft for GDIDs used by attacker-associated IPs within several 24-hour time periods during which attack-related activity took place. Windows pings Microsoft regularly with the GDID, establishing links between your GDID and any IP addresses you use. The IP logs from Microsoft and the VPS provider showed at least 10 instances where a single VPN IP accessed the attacker's VPS and also pinged Microsoft with at least one GDID within a 24-hour period. They found a constant GDID that all instances shared. This seems to have been the most damning evidence in the DOJ complaint [1] and yet it wasn't mentioned in the article. It includes the diagram from the complaint (page 18) that outlines this, but devoid of context. The ngrok stuff that the article focuses on was just the cherry on top and was discussed later in the complaint.
What also becomes clear when you read the complaint is that the GDID was just one piece of the puzzle and that they had plenty of other evidence. Attacker-associated VPN IPs were used to access the suspect's Apple, Snapchat, and Facebook accounts. He also must have briefly deactivated his VPN on his Windows PC at one point, because Windows pinged Microsoft with his actual residential IP linking his GDID to that as well.
What remains unclear even after reading the complaint is how they were so sure that the GDID they obtained visited specific websites, but honestly, at the point that they found the GDID, it was already game over for this person, so I don't know if it matters that much. It could be as simple as "he was signed into Edge with his Microsoft account and had sync enabled".
[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/media/1450651/dl?inline
[2] Technically I guess it could've been an Apple Silicon Mac, but probably not, and it doesn't really matter.
But it would be very foolish for a blackhat to turn on browser sync...
Using the school news paper shared account, I copied the bullies coursework in to the public share, made changes to the coursework on my own user account and then copied it back to their work folder using the school news papers account.
MS Office keeps an "Last edited by" field so I got caught. If I had used the school newspaper account to make the edit I wouldn't of been caught. Rookie error. I too discovered a DCOM in the Windows 98 help file that revealed all the hidden shares on the network which scared the school. This was 2004 and I was 15.
Oh and the time, I bought a BB gun off someone at school. I was a librarian in the schools library and showed it off someone of the older grade year. The head librarian confiscated it and reported it to the headmaster. The guy then gave me a copy of Q3A and I stuck with violence the video-game way.
Not in the US, of course.
This criminal mastermind got caught because he did everything but sign his name to the crimes while holding two pieces of government identification in presence of a notary.
The FBI did the bare minimum in terms of old-fashioned detective work, and correlated evidence from various sources.
The obsession with GDID is a complete nothing-burger and I'm tired of seeing it on the front page every other day.
"required" spyware: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-d...
"optional" (but on by default) spyware: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/optional-d...
This is my favorite:
Data Description for Browsing History data type
Microsoft browser data subtype: Information about Address bar and Search box performance on the device
* Text typed in Address bar and Search box
* Service response time
* Autocompleted text, if there was an autocomplete
* Navigation suggestions provided based on local history and favorites
* Browser ID
* URLs (may include search terms)
* Page title and notification text> 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 does make me wonder if people would react differently if Linux or Apple did the same thing.
https://petri.com/windows-10-ignoring-hosts-file-specific-na...
"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..."
Many, many apps read /etc/machine-id if you do a quick github search.
Apps may have been silently correlating our activity for years without us knowing.
We know DHCP, EFI, GNOME, popularity-contest and many other apps already use it. There are countless ways it could be used already that are hard to detect.
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.
That's sounds nice and all, but everything about it, from "Nothing is theoretical" to "evidence, tagged by confidence level" goes out the window when you find claude as one of the commit authors, and the content is clearly copy pasted output from claude with very little editing. Worse yet, one of the sources he cites is also clearly AI output.
I'm not even against the use of AI here. I would rather see it clearly say either "this is what claude found after I told it to investigate" or "yes this is generated by claude, but I independently verified each of the points myself".
Microsoft is a post-privacy corporation. Eventually, we really have to stop acting so shocked about this sort of thing from them.
when LTSC exists why are people using W11 ?
But do any popular linux distributions use an identifier? Ubuntu, Kali, Mint, Arch, etc?
It seems an attractive way for devs to work out telemetry. Awful in reality; but I imagine attractive.
Ultimately there's no informed consent here: The average consumer is disbelieving and surprised if you tell them what kinds of stuff Microsoft has/can put into a dossier. Nobody thinks: "Ah, Edge on a fresh Windows install, I'm glad Microsoft knows every site I visit, and can tell I'm a friend with someone because we use the same bluetooth speaker."
[0] It seems wrong to use the verb "leaks" when it's so obviously intentional.
But given there's no cloud accounts on linux I would imagine it's trivially changed just like a NIC's MAC
Also, seems unlikely it would be used for any single-signon with cloud services.
The issue with the microsoft account was not unique IDs - tons of unique things on a machine.... it was a unique thing tied to an account and shipped to remote places.
/var/lib/dbus/machine-id
/etc/machine-id
[1] https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/google-forced-to-de...
It’s much easier to switch browsers than operating systems, especially if you have apps that require windows.
Besides, there is no obligation to be equally outraged about all things.
It is silly that Google had to explicitly state that in the disclaimer.