Rufus developers have been blocked from downloading Windows ISOs, and believe there to be 'active intentional involvement from Microsoft'

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Windows 11. There's a lot I could say about Microsoft's latest operating system, but if I got into it, we'd be here all day. So, let's focus on the most recent development—namely, how many Windows Insiders have been blocked from downloading the latest preview build ISOs.

To be clear, non-Insider builds of Windows 11 are unaffected by the issue; if you're not part of the Windows Insider preview program, you should be able to update your OS just fine. But according to Neowin, folks wanting to get their hands on either the Windows 11 Canary channel build, 28020.1611, or the Server preview build, 29531, are seeing their downloads consistently fail.

A number of users have taken to the community support forum to say that it appears their IP addresses are being blocked. The developers behind Rufus, a free utility that can significantly pare down Windows 11's installation nonsense, have encountered the same ISO download issue. Whether this is a bug or an intentional block placed by Microsoft has not yet been confirmed.

However, Rufus dev Pete Batard recently commented via Github that he believes there is "active intentional involvement from Microsoft to break the script downloads." He went on to write, "In short, I'm pretty sure Microsoft paid one of their employees to figure out a way to break the Fido downloads explicitly, and then implemented that on their servers."

Batard acknowledges that this wouldn't be too hard to do seeing as Rufus is an open source project, and the Fido scripts it uses to automate downloads of Windows ISOs were written using Microsoft's Powershell. According to Neowin, this wouldn't be the first time Microsoft has done something that has broken the Fido script either.

An intentional block by Microsoft would make sense for a few other reasons too. For one thing, it would be hardly surprising if Microsoft wanted to steer users towards using its own media creation utilities and away from third-party tools (such as Rufus). Granted, that doesn't completely explain why Windows Insiders, who are presumably downloading ISOs directly, are also running headlong into the block.

That said, the block could be in place for security reasons. For instance, if there's a major issue with the build itself, it would make sense for Microsoft to block downloads until it's had time to put out the fire.

Alternatively, the IP blocks and failed downloads could potentially be an unforeseen consequence of tightening security; only last month Microsoft documented Windows Hello Tampering Vulnerability that could result in incorrect privilege assignment—locking down who has access to what may be part of a fairly reasonable mitigation response. Regardless, it'll be difficult to know for sure until Microsoft decides to comment.