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Longhorn to use UNIX-like User Permissions
destuxor writes "After years of Windows users abusing administrative accounts out of necessity, Microsoft promises that Longhorn will make better use of user permissions in what sounds exactly like what UNIX/Linux users have been doing for years. Hopefully this will fix the long list of applcations that cannot be run by a Least-Privilege User Account (LUA) while giving a much-needed security boost. Too bad "MS-root" can't watch over your grandmother when she opens emails."
Whilst this is a step in the right direction, Id be willing to bet that Microsoft will put a hefty fee on the LUA Pricniples program, putting it out of the reach of a lot of smaller software houses.
If this is the case, then users will once again become used to just allowing any old piece of software to install with higher privileges, totally defeating the purpose of this.
How many people do you think abort the installation of unsigned drivers, even when XP warns them that they are unsigned. I'd presume it is a very high percentage.
You can lead a horse to water, but you cant make it drink.
It's about damned time this issue gets addressed. Every day at work I have to fight with this M$ limitation. Chief among the offenders are:
- Kodak Share software
- Autocad
- Any serial port emulation program
- PowerDVD
Most users must be elevated to Power User status on their machines to allow them to do anything nowadays, while there are plenty of programs (like the ones listed above) that will malfunction or simply refuse to work with anything less than full Admin rights. Sometimes, I have no choice but to give a user full Admin rights...I grind my teeth as I do so, knowing full well I'll be called to disinfect the machine of countless spyware programs within weeks, if not days.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Microsoft also proposes application manifests, which allow developers to define the permissions an application needs to operate properly
I recall a few years ago when all applications even MS Office came with this type of documentation so that Netware administrators could install the software and configure the "rights" properly.
I had recently encountered a few Windows applications where permissions were a problem and I was reminiscing about just that. Serendipity?
This might not change much, windows users are generally lazy. I see most people will just log in as an administrator and stay that way forever. The article didn't mention how easy it would be to switch to an administrator either like unix's su. No matter what microsoft does security will always be a huge problem, users don't want to change they like it easy.
I'd return the game to the manufacturer and tell them that was not one of the requirements on the outside of the box and you do not have access to play the game under an admin account. There's no reason a game should have free reign of a system.
Incidentally none of my games on OS X require superuser or even an admin account. Although they require it for installation if you install anywhere else but ~/
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
Actually you made me think of an interesting point, if M$ wants the vendor to produce an summary of the permissions necessary for a program to run, would it be possible to have the program reduce it's own permissions to have the minimum necessary. For instance if you open IE as an administrator IE could immediately reduce its permissions to the absolute lowest level possible, this WOULD help quite a bit.
Yes, but how many games run SetUID root in OSX? (don't have a clue, just wondering)
Games like Abuse do this in Linux and it's always getting new exploits. How many game developers are dedicated to tightening down the security of their code?