Windows 10 is the most popular desktop operating system at the moment and it’s Microsoft’s primary foothold into Enterprise. With the expansion of G Suite, it’s possible that Google and Microsoft have made agreements to further integrate the G Suite into Windows. According to a report from ChromeStory, they spotted a massive code commit on the Chromium Gerrit which refers to a “Google Credential Provider for Windows.”
There are two things this can mean, both of which are pretty exciting for us regular users. First, let’s take a look at Microsoft’s official documentation for credential providers.
Credential providers are the primary mechanism for user authentication—they currently are the only method for users to prove their identity which is required for logon and other system authentication scenarios. With Windows 10 and the introduction of Microsoft Passport, credential providers are more important than ever; they will be used for authentication into apps, websites, and more.
Credential providers are registered on a Windows machine and are responsible for the following.
Describing the credential information required for authentication.
Handling the communication and logic with any external authentication authorities.
Packaging the credentials for interactive and network logon.
What does this mean? Well, Chrome could be used here as a “Credential Manager” for Windows. In other words, Chrome could act as a password manager in the future for the system. That’s pretty cool in itself, but there is another potential use case that ChromeStory has brought up. If a credential provider is linked for interactive or network login, you can actually use that account for logging into the computer itself. That means in the future you could potentially log into your Windows 10-based computer with your Google account.
BleepingComputer then further investigated, finding that the commit is made up of an installer called gcp_installer.exe, which also contains gcp_setup.exe, startchromeonfirstlogin.cmd, gaia1_0.dll, and gcp_eventlog_provider.dll. According to their findings, it’s pretty clear that this will be used for logging into Windows at some point in the future. It appears that it will verify a login by Google’s OAuth 2.0 API. If successful, it will then create a new account or login depending on if the account already exists. It looks pretty cool, but as always with Chromium commits, anything can change at any time.
Source: ChromeStory
Via: BleepingComputer
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