Microsoft Says Other OSes Should Imitate UAC

COA writes "Many Vista adopters find User Account Control irritating, but Microsoft thinks it's an approach other OSes should emulate. Microsoft Australia's Chief Security Adviser Peter Watson calls UAC a great idea and 'strategically a direction that all operating systems and all technologies should be heading down.' He also believes Microsoft is charting new territory with UAC. 'The most controversial aspect of Watson's comments all center around the idea that Microsoft is a leader with UAC, and that other OSes should follow suit. UAC is a cousin of myriad "superuser" process elevation strategies, of which Mac OS X and all flavors of Linux already enjoy. The fact is that Microsoft is late to the party with their Microsoftized version of sudo. That's really what UAC is, after all: sudo with a fancy display mechanism (to make it hard to spoof) and extra monitoring to pick up on "suspicious" behavior.'"

Comments

Or not?

[Sparr0]

How about UAC starts imitating better designed privilege escalation mechanisms from Linux or OS X? Of course, that would require a sensible architecture in which software can be installed by users, for themselves, without superuser permissions. And, unfortunately, it would need secure software as a basis to avoid needing unnecessary privileges to accomplish mundane tasks in insecure applications. Sorry Microsoft, you missed the boat on this one. The majority of Vista users have UAC turned off, and the majority of those who dont will turn it off as soon as they figure out how.

Re:Or not?

[SatanicPuppy]

Considering that it wouldn't be unlikely that a single app would want to do all of those things, and that most mac users work at a level where a beep, a little bomb, or an unhappy face is the amount of machine feedback they are used to processing, I think that would be a singularly bad idea.

Mind you, I'd love to see macs come with an "advanced" mode, where they display all those errors that they normally suppress.

That was one of the few Mac/PC commercials that annoyed me, the one where the PC is "spouting cryptic error messages", and the Mac says, "Oh hey, I'm a Mac, we don't do that."

Grrrrrr, like the "Bomb" or the "Unhappy face" aren't the most cryptic error messages of all? What's wrong? Someone set me up the bomb! Well THAT'S fricking helpful. If I google "bomb" I'm going to get a bunch of guys in suits with no sense of humor at my door in an hour or less, whereas if I google "DLL Error 12af2342fa4" there will probably be a page telling me what DLL is screwed up, and where to get it to reinstall.

Re:Or not?

[Drizzt Do'Urden]

Like Apple is still selling MacOS 9 on Performas..

These errors are long gone. In fact, they are gone since the introduction of MacOS X.. in 2000!

And it's not like the hexadecimal code in a blue screen was that helpful. Yeah, you know it's a driver that caused it.. so what? I knew that before the bsod!

news flash

[brunascle]

nearly all OSes already have something similar, but superior, to UAC.

Microsoftened?

[HTH NE1]

"The fact is that Microsoft is late to the party with their Microsoftized version of sudo. That's really what UAC is, after all: sudo with a fancy display mechanism (to make it hard to spoof) and extra monitoring to pick up on "suspicious" behavior.'"

Patent pending?

Agreed, other OS's need to copy UAC

[Rosyna]

Other Operating Systems need to put more annoying dialogs that ask for elevation privileges every 5 minutes and don't ask for any credentials.

Hell, they should make them appear so often people completely ignore their content and just blindly click "OK" or "Allow". Yeah, that's the ticket...

Re:Agreed, other OS's need to copy UAC

[grassy_knoll]

Other Operating Systems need to put more annoying dialogs that ask for elevation privileges every 5 minutes and don't ask for any credentials.

Hell, they should make them appear so often people completely ignore their content and just blindly click "OK" or "Allow". Yeah, that's the ticket...

Exactly.

I translated the microsoft speak as "We suck... so everyone else should too! Cancel or Allow?"

Ironic

[Chaymus]

For a company who is reknowned for brutalizing industry standards it's humorous to find them believing the industry would adopt their bastardized version of the existing.

Translation of story title...

[brennanw]

"Microsoft says other OSes should annoy the crap of its userbase more."

Patently obvious motivation.

[Tackhead]

> Microsoft Australia's Chief Security Adviser Peter Watson calls UAC a great idea and 'strategically a direction that all operating systems and all technologies should be heading down.'

Translation: "If we can get all the other operating systems to follow our lead, we can claim some sort of patent infringment on 'em."

> The fact is that Microsoft is late to the party with their Microsoftized version of sudo. That's really what UAC is, after all: sudo with a fancy display mechanism (to make it hard to spoof) and extra monitoring to pick up on "suspicious" behavior.'"

The fact that Microsoft is late to the party is what makes it a patent trap. If it were just sudo, it wouldn't be patentable. When it's "a method for controlling process elevation, comprised of (sudo) and (a fancy display mechanism) and (extra monitoring)", it becomes patentable.

Microsoft is setting a trap for future patent lawsuits. Deny or Allow?

You can tell your locked down DRM laden OS...

[A beautiful mind]

...what to do, but keep your grubby hands off the real operating systems that don't base their security on feel-good measures, but sound design and actually fixing things.

Almost right

[UnknowingFool]

The fact is that Microsoft is late to the party with their Microsoftized version of sudo. That's really what UAC is, after all: sudo with a fancy display mechanism (to make it hard to spoof) and extra monitoring to pick up on "suspicious" behavior.'"

I would say (and many here would agree) that UAC is a half-hearted, bad copy of sudo. sudo requires authentication and only for actions that require elevated privileges (like changing key system files). UAC annoying asks the user to verify suspicious behaviors to ensure that is what he or she really wants to do. Really UAC is an attempt at MS to shift the blame the user for their somewhat insecurity architecture. When something does go wrong, MS can blame the user saying it was the user's duty to verify their actions.

UAC isn't a bad idea, just one taken waaay to far.

[Vellmont]

I don't think it's such a bad idea to have some extra means of making sure a user REALLY wants to do a special action. Ubuntu and Fedora handle this by asking a user to authenticate whenever an action requiring elevated rights occurs. It's actually done quite well and is only required for doing things like adding or deleting software, and the rights stick around for a while so you're not constantly typing in passwords.

The problem of course is that Microsoft went crazy and decided to lock down EVERYTHING. To the point where it's just plain annoying running the OS with it on. I tried it for a couple weeks just to see if I could get used to it. There's a tendency for people to crave the old way of doing something not because it's better, but just because that's what they're used to. I did eventually decide UAC was more trouble than it's worth, and disabled it.

I guess I tend to agree with the theory that UAC wasn't really real security, but about putting the blame more on the user. Microsoft can just claim "Well, you DID disable UAC didn't you?, so it's not our problem."

Re:Hello Microsoft

[QuantumRiff]

Because if your a school, textbooks now contain multimedia CD-ROMS, that have Macromedia Authorware software that is a version from the good old windows 95 days, when everyone had Admin priveleges (this includes books that were published December of 06!). Try calling a publisher, and asking why the hell their software tries to copy files to %system32% before it runs. They don't understand why it wouldn't work, they work from home, and it works on the XP home machines they developed it with! Or even newer non Authorware software that feels it needs to write to HKLM in the registry, to store its configuration. Hell, I have a textbook CD that installs Apache and Mysql to do the "interactive stuff" that sets up a local web server running on port 80(without checking if it is already used), uses a few hundred MB of ram (lots of page file swapping!), requires IE, not Firefox, and heaven help you if you use a Proxy server (the publisher of the sofware has never used one, or tested with it.. how many schools use proxies!) Sorry about the rant, just had to let it out... ;) thank god for deep-freeze

Re:sudo

[plams]

Off-topic? Parent was likely referring to this gem

*clap*

[Frequently_Asked_Ans]

....and the last horse crosses the finishing line... too bad the other horses finished years ago and the race track no longer exists... *Coming soon from Microsoft* More working ideas that where implemented years ago in other operating systems that we'll claim we invented

Re:Obligatory

[jkrise]

Vista is Microsoft's proof that whatever they make, the users will just buy, the news agencies will simply extol, and the market will slowly adopt and adapt to. But with UAC, Microsoft went one step further and called everyone else IDIOTS.

And now it wants everyone to imitate them?

Re:Obligatory

[ShieldW0lf]

The interesting bit of the article was the part where it suggests that this will lead application developers for windows to start writing programs that don't need escalated privileges. Long term, such pressures are good for the "software ecosystem".

Remains to be seen if Vista will ever achieve enough market penetration to apply such pressures effectively, but still...

UAC == *TERRIBLE* Security Idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

UAC has far too many false positives to be meaningful. You can't freaking open the Control Panel without a UAC prompt.

As such, users see the prompts as an unimportant nuisance, but soon realize that things don't work unless you click "Allow." Thus, you're training users in Pavlovian fashion to click "Allow" to any damn box that comes up.

Now think about this for a second: when 99% of the prompts you get are harmless, and "Allow" is always the right answer, just how many users will actually read it and apply critical thought when they see the 1% of UAC prompts that warns of actual danger? Almost none of them, even the smart ones. Once you get trained to just click allow, you're going to click it just before your realize "Oops! I didn't want to allow THAT one!"

So if you ask me, UAC is a huge step backwards in terms of security. Microsoft appears to have put almost no thought into it and it's little more than a way of blame-shifting. After all, the USER is the one who didn't click "Deny" the one time in one hundred it would've prevented something bad, so it's *all* their fault. Even though they only did what UAC trained them to do.

Disable UAC now. It's not security; it's blame-shifting.

Re:UAC == *TERRIBLE* Security Idea!

[h2_plus_O]

You can't freaking open the Control Panel without a UAC prompt.

Actually, you can. ...but that wasn't your point.

Your point is that people are too dumb to make security decisions, so it's a bad design to require them to make them. Of course, the flip-side of this argument is that unless users are given the opportunity to make a choice, what's available is the same as no choice.
The notion that users can't make good security choices may have some merit, but the idea that disabling UAC is somehow good security advice is backwards- disabling UAC (and therefore running with a full token) is exactly the same as clicking every prompt that comes your way indiscriminately. Ironically, your advice is worse than the problem you're complaining about. OK OK, you *really* just want something better than UAC. Welcome to the club, we all want magical better security.

Security in a world of users who are trained to think that security somehow doesn't involve them will never work. Microsoft helped create that illusion, and it's bitten them hard. You might see this as blame-shifting, but I see it differently: it's pain-shifting. And it's about time. People (and the folks who write their software) have to start being responsible for their own security, and annoying tho it might be, UAC is a step in the right direction. Let's hope we start seeing software designs that don't require elevated privileges, let's look forward to users with a clue about what executing code means. Let's let Microsoft choke a little bit on how much their legacy of interoperability-over-security has cost them. ...and let's see how it goes. Will users revolt, and switch to linux en masse? Will there be much rejoicing? Or will the next version be better? Or will users get it?

Re:UAC == *TERRIBLE* Security Idea!

[jacksonj04]

This is the crux of my argument in favour of UAC and the new permissions Vista places on the filesystem. You now *cannot* assume the user will be running as admin, because even if they are you still get a UAC prompt if your application tries do something funky outside of its own 'walled garden' registry and application directories.

Result: The applications are written to behave properly and not try write garbage all over your hard disk. Proper user-specific configurations are much easier to manage. All is good!

Re:UAC == *TERRIBLE* Security Idea!

[shmlco]

Actually, if you RTFA you'll see that Microsoft is blaming many of the problems not on the users, but on the software developers. If an application is triggering a lot of UAC events then that application is probably doing something wrong (like writting registry keys to the wrong branch) and the offending code need to be rewritten.

If/when enough developers do so, they'll remove one of the major constraints against running as an ordinary user and not as an administrator.

UAC == *Decent* Security Idea!

[ImaLamer]

Except that you become conditioned to WHEN the prompts arise. (Which don't happen when opening the Control Panel btw)

A lot of programs you install in Vista don't give you the prompt, others do. Some things you do in Vista give you the prompt, others don't. Those installs that are silently passed are signed or don't request to do anything dramatic to the system, and average user doesn't care why or how, he just knows it's trusted. He or she usually got that software from the site of the publisher or physical media (likely too, a publisher who is huge) and he or she knows it's safe. The prompts arise when you get into Control Panel and other aspects of the Windows system where changes could bring failure, but not when copying your personal files around. I notice I get it on my laptop when another program calls a program that isn't signed (Firefox calls an old version of Winrar, because I don't want to buy the new one, and each time it asks me if I'd like to open the file. Not only do I LIKE this, but respect it. Sygate personal firewall conditioned me to this when Firefox was opened by another program - not only does it save the time of loading some advert page, on a DVD maybe, but it kept a few pieces of malware from phoning home. Users can understand this behavior.)

The number one item that can protect the average user is if a prompt arises out of no where. If you are browsing the web and suddenly you are asked for permission to modify your system - when you've done nothing to drive the event - you aren't going to allow it. Sure, when you download and install software you may fly through that prompt, but to the new user, the normal user, you will learn right away that installing software is dangerous. In my corporate IT environment installing any software is forbidden, running software not supplied by IT is forbidden - for a reason. After clicking through a few cancel or allows you may just discriminate a little more when it comes to your actions. Is it security? Not really, but do home users really need that much? Isn't it right to tell them that making or saving a change in the Control Panel can have adverse effects? (and likewise with the other actions?)

It's hard to attack UAC completely because Linux and others have Sudo, Redhat allowed you to escalate to root privileges by simply typing the password and to most new Linux users escalating to root has become a normal exercise. There is all this talk about OS security, but it's all in the hands of the users. To deny someone the ability to take control of their own machine is barbaric - I think we all agree with that statement. We can't lock users out of taking control of those center ring privileges, unless you're the head of IT and those machines are under you "watch". You say it shifts blame, but that is where it belongs, on the user. The help is there in Vista, it spells out the concept of UAC in easy to understand terms. There is no reason a normal user can't take advantage of it. I know many people who still accept cookies on a per request basis (on today's web!) - some people actually want this feature. It doesn't work for the great majority of us, but don't kid yourself and say we aren't completely familiar with idea.

My advice for the soccer moms and grandparents: Don't turn it off. Prompting is good. This is coming from someone who has had a desktop system with the same factory install of Windows XP running since January, 2004 (I un-boxed it June of 2004). I work with what I have, and that system has not only been a workhorse for my Windows desktop software, but runs a ton of GPL software and is enhanced with Cygwin. All together I run 6 machines at home with Debian, FreeBSD, XP Pro, XP Home, Vista (aforementioned laptop) and Windows 2000 Server. Only two of those require an escalation of privileges, at the machine Everything has a place and UAC has a place with those new users going to their retail store and buying a PC for the first time. Years ago people were complaining didn't Windows have a similar mechanism.

Finish out the quote please

[Nom du Keyboard]

Microsoft Says Other OSes Should Imitate UAC

And then we sue them.