Windows 10 may let you use a Google account for signing in

[Arthur]

Sources: Chrome Story / Bleeping Computer (via XDA Developers)

 

Windows 10 is the most popular desktop operating system at the moment and it’s Microsoft’s primary foothold into Enterprise. With the expansion of G Suite, it’s possible that Google and Microsoft have made agreements to further integrate the G Suite into Windows. According to a report from ChromeStory, they spotted a massive code commit on the Chromium Gerrit which refers to a “Google Credential Provider for Windows."

 

There are two things this can mean, both of which are pretty exciting for us regular users. First, let’s take a look at Microsoft’s official documentation for credential providers.

 

Credential providers are the primary mechanism for user authentication—they currently are the only method for users to prove their identity which is required for logon and other system authentication scenarios. With Windows 10 and the introduction of Microsoft Passport, credential providers are more important than ever; they will be used for authentication into apps, websites, and more.

 

Credential providers are registered on a Windows machine and are responsible for the following.

 

• Describing the credential information required for authentication.
  
• Handling the communication and logic with any external authentication authorities.
  
• Packaging the credentials for interactive and network logon.
  

 

What does this mean? Well, Chrome could be used here as a "Credential Manager" for Windows. In other words, Chrome could act as a password manager in the future for the system. That’s pretty cool in itself, but there is another potential use case that ChromeStory has brought up. If a credential provider is linked for interactive or network login, you can actually use that account for logging into the computer itself. That means in the future you could potentially log into your Windows 10-based computer with your Google account.

 

BleepingComputer then further investigated, finding that the commit is made up of an installer called gcp_installer.exe, which also contains gcp_setup.exe, startchromeonfirstlogin.cmd, gaia1_0.dll, and gcp_eventlog_provider.dll. According to their findings, it’s pretty clear that this will be used for logging into Windows at some point in the future. It appears that it will verify a login by Google’s OAuth 2.0 API. If successful, it will then create a new account or login depending on if the account already exists. It looks pretty cool, but as always with Chromium commits, anything can change at any time.

 

[mavhc]

Microsoft really really wants to kill Windows Server. Guess they really don't like supporting products for 10 years any more, I'd bet on the newest windows server and office being the last versions to have 10 years of support.

 

Will help with the whole "it's really easy to hashcat NTLM password hashes" problem. Also explains why they never bothered to properly add biometric login to AD

[Norphy]

I'm not so sure about that. I think it's more to do with Microsoft realising the reality of the situation around them and making provisions for them. The corporate Windows desktop is still a huge cash cow for Microsoft and doing things like this mean that Microsoft will be able to continue to milk it in the future.

[DJ-1701]

Microsoft really really wants to kill Windows Server. Guess they really don't like supporting products for 10 years any more, I'd bet on the newest windows server and office being the last versions to have 10 years of support.

 

Will help with the whole "it's really easy to hashcat NTLM password hashes" problem. Also explains why they never bothered to properly add biometric login to AD

 

Bit of a jump isn't it to say that? Opening the platform up doesn't mean they are going to kill off their server offerings.

[mavhc]

They want you to buy azure AD etc. I think they'd rather the 10% of people who didn't do that to switch to google rather than just make 10% of their old revenue