Visual Studio 2015 C++ Compiler Secretly Inserts Telemetry Code Into Binaries

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edxwelch

writes:

Reddit user sammiesdog discovered recently that Visual Studio 2015 C++ compiler was inserting calls to a Microsoft telemetry function into binaries. "I compiled a simple program with only main(). When looking at the compiled binary in IDA, I see a call for telemetry_main_invoke_trigger and telemetry_main_return_trigger. I cannot find documentation for these calls, either on the web or in the options page," he wrote. Only after the discovery did Steve Carroll, the dev manager for Visual C++ admit to the "feature" and posted a workaround to remove it.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the existence of this behavior to InfoQ, adding that the company wil bel removing it in a future preview build. For those who wish to get rid of it, the blog writes:

Users who have a copy of VS2015 Update 2 and wish to turn off the telemetry functionality currently being compiled into their code should add notelemetry.obj to their linker command line.

Read the full article here by Slashdot