Today i took my first steps into the world of Linux by creating a bookable Mint Cinamon USB stick to fuck around on without wiping or portioning my laptop drive.

I realised windows has the biggest vulnerability for the average user.

While booting off of the usb I could access all the data on my laptop without having to input a password.

After some research it appears drives need to be encrypted to prevent this, so how is this not the default case in Windows?

I’m sure there are people aware but for the laymen this is such a massive vulnerability.

  • redlemace@lemmy.world
    37·
    10 hours ago

    Same in Linux. No disk encryption and everything is easy accessible if you have physical access.

    • Aussiemandeus@aussie.zoneOP
      83·
      10 hours ago

      Physical access wouldn’t seem so hard. Say you worked at the company company and wanted to get the files your boss has on your evaluation or something. Wait till they’re on lunch, plug in a usb and pull them up.

      I imagine patient records wouldn’t be encrypted either

      • vandsjov@feddit.dk
        18·
        9 hours ago

        Any respectable company with Windows would be using BitLocker - full disk encryption. It’s super easy to setup if your computer has TPM, fully transparent for the user in most cases.

        • o_d [he/him]@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          1·
          8 hours ago

          My work macbook won’t even let me mount an external storage device, but it doesn’t seem to care about my nextcloud client running in the background. Sorry for my blasphemous behaviour my cyber security comrades 🫡🥺