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94% of Microsoft Vulnerabilities Can Be Mitigated By Turning Off Admin Rights (computerworld.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Computerworld:
If you want to shut out the overwhelming majority of vulnerabilities in Microsoft products, turn off admin rights on the PC. That's the conclusion from global endpoint security firm Avecto, which has issued its annual Microsoft Vulnerabilities report. It found that there were 530 Microsoft vulnerabilities reported in 2016, and of these critical vulnerabilities, 94% were found to be mitigated by removing admin rights, up from 85% reported last year. This is especially true with the browser, for those who still use Microsoft's browsers. 100% of vulnerabilities impacting both Internet Explorer and Edge could be mitigated by removing admin rights, Avecto reported... Windows 10 was found to have the highest proportion of vulnerabilities of any OS (395), 46% more than Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 (265 each). Avecto found that 93% of Windows 10 vulnerabilities could be mitigated by removing admin rights.
Of course, the stats are based on vulnerabilities announced in Microsoft Security Bulletins, but there's an overwhelming pattern. Turning off admin rights mitigated the vast majority of vulnerabilities, whether it was Windows Server (90%) or older versions of Microsoft Office (99%). And turning off admin rights in Office 2016 mitigated 100% of its vulnerabilities.
Of course, the stats are based on vulnerabilities announced in Microsoft Security Bulletins, but there's an overwhelming pattern. Turning off admin rights mitigated the vast majority of vulnerabilities, whether it was Windows Server (90%) or older versions of Microsoft Office (99%). And turning off admin rights in Office 2016 mitigated 100% of its vulnerabilities.
94% of all programs won't run properly without those rights.
Unfortunately for the longest time developers for Windows got away with not giving half a shit about security. To make matters worse, when MS finally decided to tighten the screws, they went overboard by a long shot. You cannot even install a simple program without elevated rights.
And to make matters worse, "elevated" means "full access, anywhere". There is no granularity, it's only "can't do jack shit" or "total control". You cannot open up the program files to install a normal program without also giving that program the ability to drop a low level driver into your system.
Then again, if that worked, a lot of people would probably notice just WHAT kind of crap their beloved games barf into the deeper intestines of their computers for the sake of the all holy DRM.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think you hit the nail on the head right there. I've always felt the interface to gain admin on Windows has been clunky and inconsistent at best.
I found it a whole lot easier to just turn Windows off.
It is very much on par with recommending not to plug the computer in to improve security. Too much of the system still requires administrative rights for it to be viable.
The real point of this story is that by disabling admin rights Microsoft can pretend to the world that their products are not the least secure in their respective classes.
Of course it completely fails to address the fact that unless you only want to do very simply things on a computer, admin rights are frequently required.
Who runs with full admin rights?
Define 'full'.
I run with admin rights on my Windows 10 machine because it's the default and it's a pain in the neck to run without. "Sorry you don't have permissions to set the clock".
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
They can't make it work. Windows core architecture is fundamentally broken and insecure. See MS's documentation about security tokens and permissions. You can only unmask permissions since 2008R2. This means that your process starts with max permissions and is masked to reduce it. Totally unlike the authentication/authorization and security elevation process in pretty much every other system out there.
No, your process starts with a *masked* token. The security subsystem creates *two* tokens when you log in: One with all of your privileges and one where "admin" privileges has been masked out. Switching from the masked token to the unmasked token is called *elevation*.
The desktop process (explorer.exe) and any process that you launch will *by default* use the non-elevated token. This means that by default none of your user processes have admin privileges, even if you logged in using a admin account. It is understandable that someone only familiar with the Linux/Unix model does not get this at first, because Linux/Unix do not have *tokens*. The *nix model can only describe the permissions of a process through an "effective user" - i.e, a reference to an account. No token.
On Windows, each process has a security token which by default is inherited from the parent process, but may differ. This is not possible on *nix where you need to refer to some user id to describe the privileges indirectly.
An executable's manifest may indicate that the it needs certain admin privileges when executed. In that case, Windows will look up to see if your *unmasked* token fits the required privileges. If it does, Windows will prompt you for consent to use the elevated token. If you approve, the new process is launched with the elevated token that was created and stored when you logged in.
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