Visual Studio 2015 Secretly Inserts Telemetry Code Into C++ Binaries

BoerenkoolMetWorst · Jun 11, 2016

Internet users have pulled out the pitchforks and are once again at odds with Microsoft regarding telemetry data, but this time around it's because the company updated Visual Studio 2015, which is now adding secret telemetry code in the C++ binaries compiled by every developer.
Click to expand...

http://news.softpedia.com/news/visu...y-code-into-c-plus-plus-binaries-505113.shtml

Rasheed187 · Jun 11, 2016

Is this some kind of joke? I think M$ has started to dig its own grave, they should stop with this nonsense.

FanJ · Jun 11, 2016

Thanks for the info, BoerenkoolMetWorst !
I'll have to ask Dmitry (devellopper of ADinf32) whether he is aware of this.

stapp · Jun 11, 2016

From the thread on Reddit which is linked to in the Softpedia report...

hi everyone. This is Steve Carroll, the dev manager for the Visual C++ team.

Tl;dr: thanks folks for the feedback. Our team will be removing this from our static libs in Update 3.

Our intent was benign – our desire was to build a framework that will help investigate performance problems and improve the quality of our optimizer should we get any reports of slowdowns or endemic perf problems in the field.

We apologize for raising the suspicion levels even further by not including the CRT source, this was just an oversight on our part. Despite that, some of you already investigated how this mechanism works in nice detail. As you have already called out, what the code does is trigger an ETW event which, when it’s turned on, will emit timestamps and module loads events. The event data can only be interpreted if a customer gives us symbol information (i.e. PDBs) so this data is only applicable to customers that are actively seeking help from us and are willing to share these PDBs as part of their investigation. We haven’t actually gone through this full exercise with any customers to date though, and we are so far relying on our established approaches to investigate and address potential problems instead.
Click to expand...

FanJ · Jun 11, 2016

Interesting thread at the DSLR security forum about the issue:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30809430-Microsoft-injecting-spyware-into-VS-C

Log in or Sign up

Visual Studio 2015 Secretly Inserts Telemetry Code Into C++ Binaries

BoerenkoolMetWorst Registered Member

Rasheed187 Registered Member

FanJ Updates Team

stapp Global Moderator

FanJ Updates Team

Log in or Sign up

Visual Studio 2015 Secretly Inserts Telemetry Code Into C++ Binaries

BoerenkoolMetWorst Registered Member

Rasheed187 Registered Member

FanJ Updates Team

stapp Global Moderator

FanJ Updates Team

Useful Searches