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What does privsep have to do with anything? You do know that in XP you were allowed to create limited access users right? If you did that and tried to run MS Office you would find that it didn't work as expected. There was even a MS knowledge base article about it, advising you against running Office as a limited account user.
I don't blame the developers so to speak, as MS enabled them to continue to write software under the old insecure model for way to long. I *do* blame software developers for making that assumption of administrative rights in the first place. They should have stood back and asked if there was ever a chance that some tin foil hat user like myself would ever consider running as a limited user (something I've done for all my customers over the years).
privilege separation = user account privileges [i.e administrator, limited user account, etc].
I also used to run on limited access user account and there were - in fact - problems with many applications, but again - it was MS fault in the first place!
here's the scheme:
1. MS designs its OS with user accounts, but no real privilege separation [i.e "do whatever you want, get the files from other accounts without giving a password] - Win95/98/NT/2k maybe?
2. MS again designs its OS with user accounts [crippled implementation - it makes YOU an admin by default] - WinXP 'Vanilla'
3. MS once again designs its OS with user accounts [now it's slightly better - "as it always should"] - WinXP Home / SP3 maybe?
4. MS changes the scheme: the previous one + UAC = more problems, more hell and inclarity. Devs are just *confused* ... - Vista / Win7
Of course I'm not talking about more advanced server versions, 'cause this is another thing. It's jus good.
But they couldn't even design their own software to work well on their own desktop OS, which is freaking hilarious!
Regards, Teknoenie





Member since:
2007-11-23
"but software that ran on Windows made some very stupid assumptions that it would have full administrative access to the machine and this meant a lot of software, including Microsoft's own Office Suite didn't work well on it."
Oh please ... you're going into the strange loop. It was MS that designed its OS in a way that no privellege separation was a fact. Don't blame software devs for that. Lol!