Bitlocker locked after grub modification

Question

Hi all,I am facing a serious problem with my Dell XPS 9360.Until yesterday I had 3-boot on my grub: Ubuntu, Kali and Windows 10. Windows 10 partition was bitlocker encrypted.I deleted the partitions via Windows 10 environment, holding Ubuntu and Kali OSs.When I rebooted my laptop it was asking me for Bitlocker unlock password. I have read online that it is due to the fact that the boot sequence has been modified and the protection mechanisms are envoked.The problem is I cannot access at the moment my hard drive with the key of Windows partition, as I am abroad. I think that if i rebuild the boot sequence as before, this could allow the bitlocker to unlock without key.Any help is appreciated.Thank you.Paris

jphughan · Answer

@Paris1948  In theory, yes if you could put your bootloader back exactly the way it was, then the 'platform integrity check' would succeed and the TPM would release the key to unlock your Windows partition.  But I don't know if that's actually feasible.  Even if you set up those partitions and OSes again and created entries for them in Grub, I don't know if that would be EXACTLY the way it was.  I don't know Grub very well, so I don't know if there are randomly generated IDs involved in some aspect of this, in which case it wouldn't be exactly the same even if you built something that looked and worked exactly the same.  You might be stuck until you can get that Recovery Key.  Going forward I would recommend storing those types of keys somewhere that is safe but that you can also access remotely.  I personally use LastPass as a password manager, and it has a Secure Notes feature that I use to store other sensitive text data like these keys.

Paris1948 · Answer

Thank you @jphughan for your reply. I guess I will give it a try since this is the only thing I can do at the moment. Indeed I will adopt better security practices going forward.

XPS

Bitlocker locked after grub modification

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