On Thursday 04 November 2004 12:29 pm, perdurabo wrote:
> On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 08:39:35 -0800, Russ Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > One of the fundamental flaws with Windows is that most of the time, any
> > user logged on has administrator privileges.
>
> That's not a flaw in Windows. That's a flaw in the system
> administrator,
It's a flaw in Windows. Trying to pass the buck to system administrators is
-- well, passing the buck.
It's true that there's a workaround for system administrators -- in those
environments where policy doesn't require them to make every user a Local
Admin.
But home users can't be expected to be fully trained as system administrators,
and this 'sploit is aimed right at them.
Microsoft's marketing department rules their design decisions, and ease of use
trumps security. Making someone supply an admin password before making any
changes to the system is still anathema to them.
According to someone I know who claims to have known Gates "back then," he had
no concept of security back in the early nineties when he was designing the
Win32 interface (although one would think he knew about separation of
priveleges, since he had Unix experience a la Xenix). He thought that
security was something he could delegate to underlings, to be tacked on to
the system as an afterthought. So on home systems, the user is still (almost
always) the Local Admin and probably always will be -- totally vulnerable to
every 'sploit out there that modifies system files.
This is inherent in Windows' design. To them it's not a flaw, it's a feature.
Ken
--
"The big innovation of [Windows] XP is that it has a back door that sucks out
all your proprietary information and presents it to Microsoft to sell it back
to you or any retailer. That's the big innovation in XP - a back door. By
the way, it still runs all your favorite viruses."
-- Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems
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