Is MS being pressured to retract the UAC feature from the next ver

[SPEnthusiast]

I'm sure you know the answer to your question, but I shall explain for the
benefit of those on these forums that don't know that answer.

UAC protects you from software that you implicitly trust. So, this software
could be from your IT department, or even from well known vendors. In both
cases, there are malicious developers, i.e. hackers, that reengineer that
software in a way so that it can spy on you and rob you.

Does that outline what you do?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have been online since late '90 and have yet to have my system
infested with either a virus or even the simplest form of malware. So
I install Vista two months ago and suddenly I need UAC to keep me
safe?

Bull.

The purpose of my reply is not to address the question of whether you
need UAC or not, but rather to address the implication that because
you haven't been infected in 28 years, the protection and care that
you've used over those past 28 years are adequate to protect you
today.

That's simply not true. The threats today are *much* greater than they
were 28 years ago.

Whether you specifically need UAC or not (I'm not a big fan of the way
it works either), you need much more care and stringent protection
that you used to, and to protect yourself adequately in the future,
you will need still more. The world changes, and we need to change
what we do to keep up with it.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

The real problem with the UAC is that it pops up when not needed. This is
the same problem the Recycle bin has had for years. People get used to
clicking the "go ahead" button without realizing the file they are deleting
is too big for the recycle bin and won't be recoverable. The UAC pops up
when you simply need to review your configuration - heck - it even pops up
when you are attempting to start perfmon, which doesn't make changes to the
system.

You took the words out of my mouth. I was just going to write a very
similar message. The way UAC presently works, most people get into the
habit of allowing the program to run. Once they are in that habit, the
risk of allowing any program, even a malicious one, to proceed is
magnified, and UAC loses any protection it's supposed to provide.

MS - fix the overzealousness of the UAC, but don't get rid of it.

My sentiments exactly.

 

[Charlie Tame]

I agree UAC by itself is not a security feature. Some of the things that
rely on UAC like IE protected mode, locked down ACLs. etc., are.

Indeed, it is a matter of the "User" realizing what is going on, and
many do not. This is no different than any other OS really, but at least
default behavior that "Warns" is better than no warning at all.
Unfortunately it does get frustrating.

 

[Charlie Tame]

Well, nice to know I am protected from my own IT department and other
legitimate sources, so if I have auto updates turned on and thus
"Implicitly" trust Microsoft what is to stop their updates getting, er
"Hacked" as you put it? UAC doesn't even ask about those.

 

[Kerry Brown]

Indeed, it is a matter of the "User" realizing what is going on, and many
do not. This is no different than any other OS really, but at least
default behavior that "Warns" is better than no warning at all.
Unfortunately it does get frustrating.

I find UAC very similar to sudo, especially as implemented in Ubuntu. It
let's you know when you're doing something that may affect the system. The
prompt itself is not really a security barrier. With an up to date Vista
install I don't see UAC prompts any more than I get prompted for a password
with Ubuntu while doing day to day tasks. If anything it's less intrusive if
you run Vista with an administrator account with UAC on.

I realise they are very different underneath. I'm saying from the user's
perspective they seem similar.

 

[Kerry Brown]

I'm sure you know the answer to your question, but I shall explain for the
benefit of those on these forums that don't know that answer.

UAC protects you from software that you implicitly trust. So, this
software
could be from your IT department, or even from well known vendors. In both
cases, there are malicious developers, i.e. hackers, that reengineer that
software in a way so that it can spy on you and rob you.

UAC does not protect you from anything. The prompts that most people think
are UAC are only one part of UAC that warns you that some process is about
access or change something that may have system wide repercussions. I guess
you could call this warning a kind of protection but it does not actually
stop anything from happening unless you respond that you don't want it to
happen. Although the underlying mechanism is different it is very much like
sudo in Linux, particularly as implemented in Ubuntu. You can do whatever
you want from a standard user account by elevating a process to use
administrator/root privileges. This part (the warnings) of UAC is a
checkpoint not a barrier.

 

[Pete Delgado]

I don't think a company like Intel is restrained by any kind of budget that
would not allow an OS upgrade across the enterprise.

You're absolutely incorrect. Though Intel may have deep pockets, they will
not just throw money at upgrades unless there is a compelling reason to do
so. Nor would *any* sane business.

These "legacy applications that are crtical to the business" that you've
mentioned are engineered to spy on people and rob them, which is why these
businesses and government organizations can't deploy Vista. UAC would
break
those apps.

Bullcrap. There are plenty of applications that were developed for previous
versions of Windows that will run afoul of UAC simply because the developers
did not give much thought to security, permissions and where to store data.
While it is true that programs such as keystroke loggers may also run into
the same problems, many of these types of programs have been implemented as
device drivers thus allowing them to run in a higher security context than
user-mode programs which eliminates much of the protection that UAC would
provide.

There are many developer tools from MS that have difficulty running under
UAC as a standard user as well as many service applications. NONE of them
were designed to rob people or to spy on them, they were simply developed to
work properly on previous versions of Windows.

I'm using Vista with Windows Server 2003 as my domain controller, and
everything works fine. I'll soon deploy Windows Server 2008, but it's no
excuse to not deploy Vista.

I have a similar setup in my home network. I have server 2003 domain
controller, several Vista clients (32 & 64-bit) and 5 Windows XP Media
Center PCs. I'll upgrade to 2008 or possibly Home Server when I upgrade my
hardware. However, the fact that I don't have any problems upgrading is due
to the fact that I have few programs that won't run correctly on Vista. For
those programs with problems, I run them within a VM on one of my systems.

My experience is not typical of a large corporation because if my upgrades
fail, I don't lose millions of dollars. To me, it doesn't matter much if one
or more of my computers are down off the network or if one or two of the
programs that I use on a daily basis won't work natively on the system. For
a large company, such things could be showstoppers.

Like I said, Vista exposes a lot of thieves.

It exposes a lot of programs that weren't written with security in mind
IMHO. It *can* expose some types of malware.


-Pete

 

[Charlie Tame]

I find UAC very similar to sudo, especially as implemented in Ubuntu. It
let's you know when you're doing something that may affect the system.
The prompt itself is not really a security barrier. With an up to date
Vista install I don't see UAC prompts any more than I get prompted for a
password with Ubuntu while doing day to day tasks. If anything it's less
intrusive if you run Vista with an administrator account with UAC on.

I realise they are very different underneath. I'm saying from the user's
perspective they seem similar.

Yes, Ubuntu does not want you to sign in as root at all, in fact you can
but I suspect that so doing can break things, it seems to be assumed you
will always use Sudo. You need to type a password (Usually) so I think
it is more secure in a way, if someone else has taken your seat they
cannot just click okay and install something, but then it does not nag
you twice for effectively the same thing.

 

[Bender]

Intel's delay in using Vista is no different than their delay switching from
Windows 2000 to Windows XP.