Slashdot Mirror
LG Split Screen Software Compromises System Security
jones_supa writes: The Korean electronics company LG ships a split screen tool with their ultra wide displays. It allows users to slice the Windows desktop into multiple segments. However, installing the software seriously compromises security of the particular workstation. The developers required administrator access for the software, but apparently they hacked their way out. The installer silently disables User Account Control, and enables a policy to start all applications as Administrator. In the article there is also a video presentation of the setup procedure. It is safe to say that no one should be running this software in its current form.
Brian Fox wrote the GNU Bash shell. If you've ever used Linux or OSX, you've used his software.
I realize that the software probably shouldn't have disabled UAC out of the box without at least informing the user, but having worked on some out-of-process COM applications (yes, legacy) in Windows Vista/7/8/10, UAC can be extremely frustrating. The biggest issue is that having UAC on creates a different user context between user and admin. If I execute a program as myself with admin privileges, it is not exactly the same as executing the program as myself without admin privileges.
For example, if your user with admin priveleges creates a COM component, that component may not be able to be accessed by a non-admin context even though your user may be in the local administrators group, DCOM Users group, etc.
I wouldn't be surprised if LG ran into a COM issue with Windows and decided to make the program for reliable for the user by disabling UAC instead of resolving the problem in a different way.
The installer silently disables User Account Control, and enables a policy to start all applications as Administrator.
Holy fucking incompetence, Batman. This reminds me of Sony's rootkit, the one that tried to hide itself from AV software, but in doing so, opened up a huge hole that any malicious program could exploit. How does shit like this make it past any kind of review? What CIO/CTO says "hmm OK, gutting security on every customer's PC sounds like a great idea!" This approaches criminal levels of negligence.
Have you tried inverting the colours?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
You must be thick in the head, that statement isn't ordering you to comply, it is simply advising users against running it. So by all means go ahead and run it and stop looking for reasons to complain!
It is a well-known fact that all Samsung software is utter crap.
We're bashing LG here, not Samsung. It's their turn next week, after we do Microsoft on Monday.
I dont mind UAC. Its just like sudo warning you 'think before you type'. Its a clear sign you are initiating a system level action.
Good-bye
The fact some program that can change the UAC settings is pretty huge example of why Windows has issues separating userspace from root space. It just simply can't do it right. Who's brilliant idea at Microsoft was it to provide any sort of API that can let any program (besides the control panel widget that lets you adjust UAC settings) adjust UAC settings?
I hope you realize what you are saying here is the equivalent of a Linux user saying "The fact that some program can change permissions after I launched it as root is an example of a huge security hole. Whose brilliant idea was it to provide any sort of mechanism that can let any program I run as root do things a user who is root can do?".
This is an example of why UAC exists, in fact: A program that is not UAC elevated could not change your UAC settings (if you hadn't turned them off already).
No, I have seen some utterly substandard garbage code written by Ameriancs, so according to my anecdote it's probably from there.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
A dialog that pretty much only appears when (un)installing software is hardly obnoxious in my opinion. Security popups may well be ineffective for most people, but as a power user I know when UAC prompts should and shouldn't appear; getting a prompt when one shouldn't pop up is a useful warning sign.
There are ways to work around UAC without disabling it in this case. I know, because I wrote MaxTo, which does much the same things, and works with software running under UAC.
If you want MaxTo to work with UAC, you'll need to run MaxTo elevated. If you say deny elevation, it simply won't work with elevated software.
I'm pretty sure LG just took the "easy way" out (or they may have nefarious purposes, but I won't speculate), instead of figuring out how to communicate between elevated and non-elevated processes.
To do this sort of thing, you'll need to divide your software into a few parts. First and foremost, you'll need to install a global system hook. That hook has to be written in unmanaged code (meaning C/C++). You'll need software that controls the hook (but it can be written in a managed language). Now, both the controlling software and the hook has to be compiled as both x64 and x86 code. They will probably also have to communicate with eachother across the x86/x64 platform boundary.
Now, to get the software to communicate (using window messages) across the UAC boundary, you have to specifically let Windows know which window messages your app will accept from the other side. This is probably the step they missed. You do this by using ChangeWindowMessageFilter or ChangeWindowMessageFilterEx .
Anyone who still insists in writing Microsoft as "M$" just shows that you can't take him seriously.
Oh dear, you got modded up, what a surprise.
"There's a bunch of options, ranging from "mark everything setuid and owned by root" (the least efficient, but you could do it in a few lines of shell script)"
Yes, and it would take literally hours on a bit system plus a lot of things would break because they check their user id and won't run if they have superuser permissions for security reasons. As for NFS mounts... Next...
"which is a trivial edit to /etc/users)."
$ ls -l /etc/users /etc/users: No such file or directory
ls: cannot access
Oh 'm sorry, did you mean /etc/passwd ?
Yes you could set all users to uid 0. And nothing would happen except no one would be able to login since in unix users are actually distinguised by their numeric user id, not their name which is merely an attribute thats used for login.
"Frankly, you kin of sound like you're mouthing off without knowing anything of what you're talking about"
Ah, theres nothing like a nice bit of irony in a post :o)
" have mod points, as it happens, but chose to reply instead"
You shouldn't have bothered. You might know ignorance about unix is quite apparent since you don't even realise why ACLs are required in Windows but rarely used in unix due to group permissions and multiple group membership.
Now go away and educate yourself.