A zero-day exploit circulating online allows people with physical access to a Windows 11 system to bypass default BitLocker protections and gain complete access to an encrypted drive within seconds.

The exploit, named YellowKey, was published earlier this week by a researcher who goes by the alias Nightmare-Eclipse. It reliably bypasses default Windows 11 deployments of BitLocker, the full-volume encryption protection Microsoft provides to make disk contents off-limits to anyone without the decryption key, which is stored in a secured piece of hardware known as a trusted platform module (TPM). BitLocker is a mandatory protection for many organizations, including those that contract with governments.

When one disk volume manipulates another

The core of the YellowKey exploit is a custom-made FsTx folder. Online documentation of this folder is hard to find.…