Listening to Aaron Margosis TechEd webcast
Well, I'm sitting here waiting for Aaron's webcast to start...
OK, here we go...
Apparently lot's of people in the audience have tried running LUA and given up.
He says on Windows XP Workstation that there really are only Administrators and Limited Users. That is obvious on XP Home, but also true on XP Pro. On XP Pro, Power User is essentially Admin. A power user can elevate privilege at will.
He uses some analogies:
Would you always leave the house with 50 grand in your pocket, when only need dollars.
Would you always carry sharp scissors/a knife, just because you need them sometimes.
He has a slide titled "User Exposure" which lists categories of dangerous apps - really all Internet-facing apps.
He made surprising observations on allowing accounts with a blank password on XPHome. He thinks it is a good thing, since internally Windows restricts privileges of an account without a password. It can only be used to logon at the machine console and cannot access network resources, along with some other restrictions. So he feels it is ideal for some home accounts.
He also talked a bit about Rootkits. They are only an issue if your system has already been compromized and then they try to hide their presence. Very interesting and sort of scary. He explained the ongoing arms race between writers of the rootkits and those trying to detect them.
Lot's more, but for that I will post a link to the webcast when it is up.
Overall that was a very worthwhile session. Particularly the way he emphasized that while running non-admin is the right thing to do, it is not a magic bullet.
OK, here we go...
Apparently lot's of people in the audience have tried running LUA and given up.
He says on Windows XP Workstation that there really are only Administrators and Limited Users. That is obvious on XP Home, but also true on XP Pro. On XP Pro, Power User is essentially Admin. A power user can elevate privilege at will.
He uses some analogies:
Would you always leave the house with 50 grand in your pocket, when only need dollars.
Would you always carry sharp scissors/a knife, just because you need them sometimes.
He has a slide titled "User Exposure" which lists categories of dangerous apps - really all Internet-facing apps.
He made surprising observations on allowing accounts with a blank password on XPHome. He thinks it is a good thing, since internally Windows restricts privileges of an account without a password. It can only be used to logon at the machine console and cannot access network resources, along with some other restrictions. So he feels it is ideal for some home accounts.
He also talked a bit about Rootkits. They are only an issue if your system has already been compromized and then they try to hide their presence. Very interesting and sort of scary. He explained the ongoing arms race between writers of the rootkits and those trying to detect them.
Lot's more, but for that I will post a link to the webcast when it is up.
Overall that was a very worthwhile session. Particularly the way he emphasized that while running non-admin is the right thing to do, it is not a magic bullet.
posted by Allan Wolff at 7:37 AM
1 Comments:
His webcast can be veiwed on demand here
Post a Comment
<< Home