I have enabled BitLocker on my C and D drives and I am using Win 10 Pro without the TPM. Therefore, I can only boot the computer with a password or USB stick.
I saved the BitLocker recovery key (.txt) to my USB stick a backup copy and encrypted this file using AXCrypt. However, when I boot my computer with the USB stick attached (F:), to my amazement, the computer uses the BitLocker key on F: and successfully booted up.
Can someone pls explain, how does the OS read and decrypt the recovery key and use it to boot my computer? I only stored the recovery key on my USB drive as a backup and was taken aback when I did a restart with USB drive attached to find it booted. I was under the impression that encrypted means encrypted.
