The passwords for accounts in the cloud are supposed to be protected by Windows’ built-in encryption, but a team of security researchers demonstrated at the Black Hat security conference in the US last week how to bypass the operating system’s security. A thief – or someone unconcerned with the finer points of federal hacking laws – can take advantage of the vulnerability to discover the passwords stored by web browsers and other programs like instant messaging clients. So can police, using electronic forensics to analyse a computer seized during a criminal investigation or without a warrant at a national border.