Microsoft's GDID - Global Device Identifier

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Digitalfuzz

New member
Jul 21, 2026
1
0
In watching this video,
, I learned of Microsoft's GDID, or Global Device IDentifier.

I immediately thought of GRC, and if Steve could come up with a way to squash this "bug".
 
This is not something that I think can ever be rid of unless Microsoft remove it, and even if they said they had, I would not believe them.

Maybe it is as simple as adding a specific entry into the registry but if this were discovered, they could patch it to something new, heck, they could patch it every month.
 
Perhaps we could all use the old trick to confuse Google cookies. If everybody changed their GDID to "all zeroes", identification would fail.
 
The GDID is server-assigned, not locally assigned, so no matter how
we play with it, it gets reconstructed.

It's used by Microsoft to uniquely identify Microsoft customers.

Solution: don't be a Microsoft customer.

I have no GDID on any of my Windows computers.

- - - - -

Really, see the GRC Security Now thread under:
Subject: the Windows GDID
https://grc.com/groups/securitynow:46894