Bitlocker Problem

[Cr33ps]

Hello. Sorry in advance for the massive text. It was a bad decision from me and I'm just wondering if theres anything I can do to get back in or backup any files if I have to reset everything.

 

-First of all I enabled bitlocker for my entire C Drive (my system runs on it)

 

-Copied the bitlocker codes to three places: A usb that has this file encrypted and has the certificate stored on my main pc (C drive), onto a second usb that has bitlocker to go which I remember the password for and is also encrypted with the same certificate, and the bitlocker recovery codes are also on my C drive itself possibly but are locked. 

 

-The bitlocker recovery code was NOT printed off or saved to a Microsoft account 

 

-The certificate is only on my pc but I copied it to both usb drives by accident then deleted it so they can be recovered possibly

 

-I have recovered the certificate onto a laptop and recovered the bitlocker codes but are again encrypted

 

- The bitlocker recovery code file won't open because it says that " I need an administrator or owner" to access the file even though I have the recovered certificate. The admin is the pc that is bitlocked and unaccessible.

 

-I have copied the certificate onto the laptop without any luck of opening the file

 

-I have tried editing permissions of the file but I still need that certificate 

 

-The reason that bitlocker came up in the first place was because I used M-Flash to update the bios and it put me in the bitlocker blue screen after it was completed for security reasons I'm guessing

 

Thanks so much in advance and I doubt I will be able to do much but it may be possible. All because of one mistake of not printing off codes!

[BoomerDutch]

Unfortunately we aren't allowed to tell you how to break into the system or decrypt it.

 

However i can say, there are some tools available on some GitHub or somewhere to decrypt bitlocker or unlocking somehow.

 

Because bitlocker is not really great encryption program according my experience.

 

Good luck and next time backup accordingly.

[Eigenvektor]

19 minutes ago, Cr33ps said:

-Copied the bitlocker codes to three places: A usb that has this file encrypted and has the certificate stored on my main pc (C drive), onto a second usb that has bitlocker to go which I remember the password for and is also encrypted with the same certificate, and the bitlocker recovery codes are also on my C drive itself possibly but are locked.

So in short… the recovery codes you need to unlock your C drive in case it is no longer accessible are effectively stored on your C drive…

 

What exactly do you mean by certificate here, are you talking about something like a .pem file, a .cer file, a .p12 file? A certificate generally can't be used to decrypt it is only used to encrypt. You need a private key to decrypt it.

 

If your drive is encrypted and you have no usable recovery key, then there's nothing we can do. If you have a USB stick with recovery codes on it and the only reason you can't access them is because of Windows file permissions, you should be able to access them with an admin account on another PC.

[Cr33ps]

14 hours ago, BoomerDutch said:

However i can say, there are some tools available on some GitHub or somewhere to decrypt bitlocker or unlocking somehow.

Thanks I'll take a look and hopefully there is something

[Cr33ps]

14 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

What exactly do you mean by certificate here, are you talking about something like a .pem file, a .cer file, a .p12 file? A certificate generally can't be used to decrypt it is only used to encrypt. You need a private key to decrypt it..

The certificate is a .pfx format I'm not really sure how it works but it was made in file explorer for the folder that it was in. The folder itself allows me to view the contents but the files inside of it are locked.

[Eigenvektor]

4 minutes ago, Cr33ps said:

The certificate is a .pfx format I'm not really sure how it works but it was made in file explorer for the folder that it was in. The folder itself allows me to view the contents but the files inside of it are locked.

A .pfx is a certificate in PKCS#12 format. It contains both a certificate and private key and may be encrypted. You typically need to provide a password to access the private key. The private key is probably what you need to access the recovery keys.

[Cr33ps]

2 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

A .pfx is a certificate in PKCS#12 format. It contains both a certificate and private key and may be encrypted. You typically need to provide a password to access the private key. The private key is probably what you need to access the recovery keys.

Alright thanks Is there any way of me being able to put in a password to access the private key because I think I have it from when I created the certificate. I only have access to cmd and it is limited to the X:\ drive which is the partition for bitlocker inside of my main C:\ drive

[Eigenvektor]

45 minutes ago, Cr33ps said:

Alright thanks Is there any way of me being able to put in a password to access the private key because I think I have it from when I created the certificate. I only have access to cmd and it is limited to the X:\ drive which is the partition for bitlocker inside of my main C:\ drive

Sure, you can easily extract the private key, for example: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16397858/how-to-extract-private-key-from-pfx-file-using-openssl

However you will need the password used to protect it.

 

Though I'm not quite certain what you expect to do with it. To unlock your partition you need the Bitlocker recovery keys. This means you need to decrypt the encrypted recovery keys using whatever program you used to encrypt them. That program would likely accept the pfx as is and simply require whatever password you used on top of that.

[Cr33ps]

35 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Sure, you can easily extract the private key, for example: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16397858/how-to-extract-private-key-from-pfx-file-using-openssl

However you will need the password used to protect it.

Alright thanks for your help. I don't think that I will be able to get the keys as the whole drive is locked so I will do a windows reset. Is there any way for me to save the product key because I have already tried the cmd command for it and it just errors me? My motherboard is the MSI B550 GAMING GEN3 ATX AM4 MOTHERBOARD incase there are methods in bios. If I do a full windows reset could any software such as Recuva possibly recover any data or is it fully lost?

[Eigenvektor]

47 minutes ago, Cr33ps said:

If I do a full windows reset could any software such as Recuva possibly recover any data or is it fully lost?

Any encrypted data is lost if you don't have the encryption key. The whole purpose of encryption is to make data unusable without the proper key.

 

Microsoft turned Windows licenses into a digital key bound to your hardware a while ago. All of these "extract your license key" things no longer work and aren't necessary actually. You shouldn't need to enter a product key, it should automatically be licensed when you reinstall Windows on the same hardware.

 

If you create a Microsoft account and sign in to it, the key also gets bound to that account and you can transfer it to a new PC later: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/reactivating-windows-after-a-hardware-change-2c0e962a-f04c-145b-6ead-fb3fc72b6665

[Cr33ps]

 

2 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

Any encrypted data is lost if you don't have the encryption key. The whole purpose of encryption is to make data unusable without the proper key.

 

Microsoft turned Windows licenses into a digital key bound to your hardware a while ago. All of these "extract your license key" things no longer work and aren't necessary actually. You shouldn't need to enter a product key, it should automatically be licensed when you reinstall Windows on the same hardware.

 

If you create a Microsoft account and sign in to it, the key also gets bound to that account and you can transfer it to a new PC later: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/reactivating-windows-after-a-hardware-change-2c0e962a-f04c-145b-6ead-fb3fc72b6665

Alright thank you so much your help is appreciated