With respect to the UAC, the author has this to say:
One reason for the condemnation is that many administrators believe that a lot of legacy applications are programmed to have free reign over the system; truth is, however, they end up not being compatible with Vista.Windows professionals require elevated permissions to perform elevated tasks. Those tasks are more difficult when administrators are treated like common users. Hence, more criticism.
Even though User Account Control can be annoying at times, I think Microsoft had no choice -- it had to create this feature. Windows XP had such a bad reputation in regards to how easily it could be infected with malware that Microsoft made sure Vista was designed in a way that would prevent malware from taking over the system.
Well, some of the argument the author used is totally wrong.
There is no excuse for developers at the end of year 2007 not to be aware of the Windows Security Model that was first released with Windows 2000. If they are unable to learn by now and most I dare to assert aren't even aware of the security specification, the OS should simply banish them.
XP is given such a bad name because these developers are not well educated. Their ignorance influences other users to turn off the security model. I once questioned a well-known accounting software package why it required Administrative Rights to run and what privilege operations that needed such high level of demands. Of course, I was told it needs Admin rights. On deeper investigation, it turned out the software company was more interested in protecting its license than to protect the users machine and data by using a licensing protection software technique that obviously was poorly developed as that was the part that demands administrative rights.
1) Microsoft attempts to make things easier for ordinary users by opting to allow user to run wild with no security - the easiest way out. Have you ever seen a Windows installer that when adding a new user defaulting to non-Administrator accounts?
2) Why isn't there any auditing of violation? or interception of invalid calls and logged them into event log. At least this can allow developers to have a chance to see any invalid or security violating calls.
3) Microsoft built the tools that most developers use to develop Windows software and why that tool does not have any debugging hooks to watch for this kind of violation or excessive demand of rights? And in the latest version still does not have any. In .Net 2, the debugger can pick up cross thread UI calls when using WinForm. It is at all possible. Just look at how Vista virtualizes some of this calls that would be invalid in XP running in limited users account. If it can virtualize those access to HKLM or protected folders, why can't it write an event log entry or picked up by debugger?
If Microsoft has attacked this problem when Windows 2000 is first released, by now there would not be a need to waste so much resources just to help out ignorant and arrogant developers who not only are not conversant with the security model but also are not using the operating system properly.
I have been doing all sorts of development in LUA (Least-Privilege User Account) for years now and have not encountered any issue. Sure I have to enlist Administrative mode to do certain task but in most other time, LUA is fine. The most annoying things are software package that fails to comply with LUA from large software development house, some are documented in this blog, that you would expect them to know better.
Why doesn't Microsoft host the 'Hall of Shame' of security violators much like the Hardware compatibility list?
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