Hacker News

As I mentioned in the mailing list post, the Microsoft paperwork shuffling matter got dealt with rather quickly, following all the attention the HN thread from the other day got. And now we're finally out with an update!

NT programming is a lot of fun, though this release was quite challenging, because of all of the toolchain updates. On the plus side, we got to remove pre-Win10 support -- https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2026-March/00954... . But did you know that Microsoft removed support for compiling x86 drivers in their latest driver SDK? So that was interesting to work around. There was also a fun change to the Go runtime included in this release: https://github.com/golang/go/commit/341b5e2c0261cc059b157f1c...

All and all, a fun release, and I'm happy to have the Windows release train cooking again.

As a wireguard user myself (even on the lone Windows machine that I still begrundingly have), I am happy that this problem could have been resolved. I am just wondering - if there had not been this kind of public outcry and outrage that Mr. Donenfeld discounts in his announcement message, would the issue have been fixed by now?

What are individual developers of "lesser" (less important, less visible, less used) software with a Windows presence to do? Wait and pray for Goliath to make the first benevolent move, like all the folks who got locked out forever from their Google accounts on a whim? Ha!

The fact of the matter is, the code signing requirements on Windows are a serious threat to Free and Open Source Software on the platform. Code signing requirements are a threat to FOSS on all platforms that support this technique, and infinitely more so where it's effectively mandatory. I firmly believe that these days, THIS is the preferred angle/vector for Microsoft to kill the software variety their C-levels once publicly bad-mouthed as "cancer", and zx2c4 is one of the poor frogs being slowly boiled alive. Just not this time - yet.

But what would have happened if they weren't able to get Microsoft's attention through an outside channel (this site) and had to go through the normal process?

I'm glad it was resolved quickly for WireGuard, but I'm concerned the results won't generalize.

Also, thanks for WireGuard!

LibreOffice, VeraCrypt, WireGuard. 2 questions:

Whats next?

Is that a pattern?

Happy to see it resolved and I hope the other developers are able to have the same experience.

By the way, was it only for the Windows application, or was wireguard-go was also affected?

There was a lot of speculation about this issue because readers assumed that WireGuard's was the only account that got locked. There was actually a wave of account locks that happened at the same time. If you only saw one of the headlines you might assume it was targeted or the result of some directed conspiracy, not the result of a widespread process.

Microsoft did a (very!) bad job of communicating what was happening, but The Register has more information:

> He explained that both deactivations were executed as part of the Windows Hardware Program's account verification procedures.

> The company published a blog in October, giving devs a two-week warning that if their accounts had not been verified since April 2024, Microsoft would issue mandatory account verification notifications.

> "We worked hard to make sure partners understood this was coming, from emails, banners, reminders," said Davuluri.

>The comments that followed were a bit off the rails. There's no conspiracy here from Microsoft. But the Internet discussion wound up catching the attention of Microsoft, and a day later, the account was unblocked, and all was well. I think this is just a case of bureaucratic processes getting a bit out of hand, which Microsoft was able to easily remedy. I don't think there's been any malice or conspiracy or anything weird.

it was a bit crazy how quickly people got conspiracy-minded about it.

microsoft fucked up, and as per typical big-tech, only fixed it when noise got made on social media. but not everything is a grand conspiracy orchestrated by microsoft or the government or whatever. incompetence is always more likely than malice.

any news from the veracrypt maintainers? i would imagine whatever microsoft employee got tasked with resolving this issue would have also seen that one.

---

edit: well, i certainly underestimated the response to this comment. my mistake for using a common saying rather than being extremely explicit when it comes to something as emotionally charged as microsoft. i dont think i have seen a comment of mine go up and down points so many times before.

what i intended to get across was: "this was not a deliberate, coordinated, purposeful attack on the wireguard project, at the behest of some microsoft executive, to accomplish some goal of making encrypted communication impossible or whatever. instead, this was the result of a stupid system, with a stupid resolution process (social media), that is still awful, but different in important ways from a deliberate attack. this is the typical scenario (stupid system, stupid resolution). the non-typical scenario would be a deliberate choice made and executed by microsoft employees to suddenly destroy a popular project".

i shortened the above paragraph to the common saying "incompetence is always more likely than malice". i shouldnt have. my bad.

I don't think you can let them off that easily, given that the only effective support channel was "get to the front page of hacker news", which isn't usually an option.

What's going on at Microsoft? Why did they suddenly declare war on VPN and related software projects?