![]() The operating system cries wolf so much that when a real wolf- in the form of a virus or malware- rolls around, you'll mindlessly allow it access to whatever it wants, just out of habit. All those earnest warning dialogs eventually blend together into a giant "click here to get work done" button that nobody bothers to read any more. The problem with the Security Through Endless Warning Dialogs school of thought is that it doesn't work. ![]() Even though you're ostensibly logged in as an "Administrator", you're inundated with a sea of security dialogs if you try to do anything even remotely, well, Administrator-y. We have fairly recent internal builds of Vista for a project we're working on at Vertigo, and we've run into this problem too. It is, in fact, almost criminal in its insidiousness. It would be hilarious if it weren't going to affect hundreds of millions of people in a few short months. That these dialogs pop up repeatedly for the same action would be comical if it weren't so amazingly frustrating. The problem with UAP is that it throws up an unbelievable number of warning dialogs for even the simplest of tasks. It's the most annoying feature that Microsoft has ever added to any software product, and yes, that includes that ridiculous Clippy character from older Office versions. ![]() The bad news, then, is that UAP is a sad, sad joke. ![]() But this is Microsoft, we're talking about here. The feature is called User Account Protection (UAP) and, as you might expect, it prevents even administrative users from performing potentially dangerous tasks without first providing security credentials, thus ensuring that the user understands what they're doing before making a critical mistake. In Windows Vista, Microsoft is indeed moving to this kind of security model. This type of security model protects users from themselves, and it is something that Microsoft should have added to Windows years and years ago. Modern operating systems like Linux and Mac OS X operate under a security model where even administrative users don't get full access to certain features unless they provide an in-place logon before performing any task that might harm the system. Paul Thurrott's scathing article Where Vista Fails highlights my biggest concern with Windows Vista: ![]() Windows Vista: Security Through Endless Warning Dialogs ![]()
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