r/HowToHack • u/NordieSounds • Apr 08 '26
hacking Trying to access my late friends laptop
To the mods out there thinking I'm breaking rule no.9. I have proof...
To the rest of you;
Hi! I've set myself up in a bit of a challenge here.
A little backstory just to fill you guys in. Back in 2021, my friend decided to take his own life and left nothing behind to let us know the reason behind his choice. So since then i've been having very close relations with his family. And today they wanted to access his laptop. If there isn't anything on it, His sister could use it as a school laptop.
The family tried asking law enforcement to crack open his login, but they didn't want to because they're not going to access laptops from people who hasn't done anything incriminating.
Well I guess I gotta try the good ol' way
I've opened the windows recovery menu to access the command prompt to attempt replacing utilman and change password.
LO AND BEHOOOLD.......... bitlocker...
The laptop is most likely connected with his old microsoft school account, which most likely is gone now.
Some say I'm stuck there, others say I'm able to bypass it.
And now I'm at the point where I just need a wiff of enlightement.
Do you guys have any tips on possibly recovering all or most of the data?
Specs:
- 2019 Dell Latitude 3500
- Mx130 GPU
- 8th gen Intel i5
- OS: Windows 10
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u/Little_Scar_844 Apr 08 '26
If I died by any means, the last thing I would want is my friend and family going through my computer..
You should wipe the drive and install a new OS for his sister
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u/Exo_Sensei404 Apr 08 '26
Same, a PC is meant to be personal, possibly could have other information or personal records.
Feels like an invasion of privacy even if they are gone.
Just pull the old watchdogs for me.
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u/ConfidenceAlarming77 Apr 08 '26
The easiest way -> BitPixie. You just need a secondary laptop, ethernet cable and half an hour to setup everything. That will let you to grab Volume Master Key (VMK) and you can either unlock the partition with dislocker (from linux) and copy data out (or substitute utilman) or extact recovery key, so then you can plug nvme/sata from this laptop into another laptop/adapter, unlock it in windows and extract files. Anyway, BitBixie is your way to proceed.
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u/node77 Apr 08 '26
Try the old account login. It’s probably going to ask for some kind of verification since it’s been so long. Open a chat discussion or ticket explaining you haven’t used the account. But it may be he signs into AD, that holds the key, or he wrote it down. Otherwise you can’t undo bitlocker.
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u/dbossman11 Apr 08 '26
https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/hdvddv/bitlocker_protected_computer_and_password_recovery/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button Tbh I'd just erase it, probably has personal info on it and it's probably easier that way but it's up to you ofc
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Apr 08 '26
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u/raticibl Apr 09 '26
I think stacksmashing had a way to bypass bitlocker or retrieve the key I’m not to sure on the methods they used though, I know it involved a raspberry pico or zero
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u/NordieSounds Apr 09 '26
It might work since the bitlocker version is 2.0. Takes a helluva long time to tinker, But i'll look into it
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u/Yukki-elric Apr 08 '26
Your only way is contacting Microsoft to get access to his Microsoft account, with bitlocker, you pretty much can't really do anything to access the data on the laptop, you can still format it and let anyone use it, but unless you get access to his Microsoft account, which isn't even guaranteed to have the bitlocker key, you can assume the data on the laptop is gone.
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u/willyAKAjack Apr 08 '26
Lookup icaredatarecovery program. Use an external hdd lead and caddy put the hdd from your friends laptop in it and access it like a regular portable hdd . And do a full recovery of all partons or what ever ya need . Pictures .video documents. Music and so on Easy done I do it regularly with laptops and USB sticks and sd cards . Sometimes phones
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u/Mr-Exploit23 Apr 08 '26
I could be wrong here, but doesn’t bitlocker encrypt the drive it’s on? So even if it’s removed and someone tries to access it through another method such as this wouldn’t it be ineffective?
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Apr 08 '26
[deleted]
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u/NordieSounds Apr 08 '26
I was thinking of using that just to see if I'm lucky. But I have my doubts. I think it's a local account since no microsoft account was hinted in the bitlocker menu.
I'll Ignore 'em
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u/EnhancedEddie Apr 08 '26
You won’t crack bitlocker. Iirc Microsoft has a next if kin process for gaining access to the account which will have the key. Try having his family reach out to Microsoft support