Everything in "Program Files" read/execute by all

[Fred Ma]

Hi,

I just used cygwin to make everything in c:\Program Files
readable and executable by all. It seemed like an OK thing
to do. The most sensitive information seems to be netscape 4.7
Mail, which was readable by everyone anyway (according to the
permission bits). But I am no expert in Windows 2000. I was
wondering if I could sanity check the, um, sanity of having
done that sweeping permission change.

Fred

P.S. As a point of clarification, I found all files
for which Administrator had read or execute permission,
and gave the corresponding permission to "all". There
seem to be no files for which Administrator did not have
read and execute permission, so this means the entire
hierarchy was made read/execute accessable to all. I
did not grant write permission to all, but some files already
had it e.g. netscape mail files and Symantec firus definition
files.

 

[Oli Restorick [MVP]]

The default permissions are that users can read and execute everything in
c:\program files, so this is entirely reasonable. I'm not sure what would
have happened to your machine for the permissions not to be set like this in
the first place.

Well-behaved applications (that is, those written by someone with half a
brain) will not store any user data in c:\program files. Unfortunately,
some application vendors have yet to work out the difference between a user
and a computer.

In addition, it shouldn't be necessary to loosen the permissions to
c:\program files for ordinary users. Again, some applications require it.

Hope this helps

Oli

 

[Fred Ma]

The default permissions are that users can read and execute everything in
c:\program files, so this is entirely reasonable. I'm not sure what would
have happened to your machine for the permissions not to be set like this in
the first place.

Well-behaved applications (that is, those written by someone with half a
brain) will not store any user data in c:\program files. Unfortunately,
some application vendors have yet to work out the difference between a user
and a computer.

In addition, it shouldn't be necessary to loosen the permissions to
c:\program files for ordinary users. Again, some applications require it.

Thanks, Oli. I guess I was sane....

Fred

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

The default permissions are that users can read and execute
everything in c:\program files, so this is entirely reasonable. I'm
not sure what would have happened to your machine for the permissions
not to be set like this in the first place.

Well-behaved applications (that is, those written by someone with
half a brain) will not store any user data in c:\program files.
Unfortunately, some application vendors have yet to work out the
difference between a user and a computer.

Intuit, for one....drives me nuts. Oh, and also, how about not requiring
local admin rights just to run an app?