LUA / Non-admin

I've been somewhat remiss of late in my focus on what I consider to be a very important aspect of the discipline of software development, namely least privilege. I was fortunate to have one of the great folks in my local developer community, Randy Hayes...

I've been somewhat lax in my postings on least privilege of late, in part because I've been pretty pleased with what I've been seeing in Windows Vista for low privilege, which we call the User Access Control (UAC) feature. UAC allows you to run as either...

A somewhat long, but very interesting, article on experimental evidence of the benefits of using LUA (least privileged user accounts). An important point they found...Power User isn't the answer. The findings indicated that removing a user account from...

Entitled, appropriately enough, http://www.leastprivilege.com/ . Some good posts: A link to some good info on ASP.NET 2.0 configuration from local guru K. Scott Allen (who, I should note, will likely be speaking again at our upcoming Security...

Nigel Watling, one of my fellow evangelists who works out of Redmond, and who got the nod to present my session on least privilege for developers at Tech-Ed EMEA, has posted a good entry on least privilege on his blog . My favorite bit is the following...

Shame on me that I forgot last week to mention Robert Hurlbut's excellent Birds of a Feather session on Developing with Least Privilege. It was a nice opportunity to have an informal discussion about some of the challenges involved, and Robert showed...

Only another hour or so left in Tech-Ed officially. I did my session on Developing with Least Privilege this morning at 9am. Good group, and remarkably wide awake, given that the attendee party at Universal Studios Orlando was last night. Thanks to all...

Heading to Orlando in the morning...getting up at 4:30, which is less than 4 hours from now. Woohoo! I'm very excited about the coming week at Tech-Ed 2005. I can tell that most of Microsoft is already there or on the way because my email inbox has...

From my friends at Central Maryland ASP.NET Professionals User Group : Meeting Date: Tuesday, June 7, 2005 Time: 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM Central Maryland ASP.NET Professionals (cmap-online.org) Location: UMBC Technology Center 1450 South Rolling...

From my colleague Aaron Margosis : Tech*Ed 2005 in Orlando, FL (USA) will include significant coverage of "non-admin" topics: · SEC350 - "Tips and Tricks to Running Windows with Least Privilege" , presented by Aaron Margosis, and · SEC351...

You can still get some of the great content via the simulcast Webcasts : Microsoft Tech·Ed 2005 is sold out but you can still explore Microsoft technologies and solutions in this series of webcasts. Join us through the end of May for pre-Tech·Ed...

SysInternals' free Autoruns utility can help you track down what's auto-starting, so you can get rid of stuff you don't want. If you use it from a low-privilege account, and then from an admin account, you'll probably notice that there are a lot more...

How to allow users to manage file and print shares without granting other advanced privileges http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/archive/2005/04/18/409105.aspx

Robert Hurlbut just announced that his suggestion for a Least-Privileged Development Birds of a Feather session was accepted for Tech-Ed 2005 . I'll definitely be there: The TechEd BOF (Birds of a Feather) voting is over and mine was accepted. Here...

As I prepare for an upcoming talk at Tech-Ed 2005 on Least Privilege for Developers, it's worth reviewing a post from my colleague Aaron Margosis on Least Privilege and Explorer , in which he discusses some workarounds for challenges in making Windows...

InfoWorld takes a somewhat skeptical tone in their article on the new LUA model in Longhorn , but even so, it's great to see the topic of least privilege getting more attention from the industry media. The article, I think, overstates the difficulty...

Check out: Ctrl-C doesn't work in RUNAS or MakeMeAdmin command shells Remembering Calculator and Character Map Settings Managing Power Options as a non-administrator

Recently, I had someone make the following comment on a post announcing IE 7 : Hahahaha....dude we don't need it! I'm a Microsoft person 100%, but creating something we already have is useless! We have Firefox! The FLAWLESS web suite. It's awesome enough...

Another tidbit from Aaron Margosis : Changing the system date, time and/or time zone . Addressing one of the most common complaints about running as non-admin

I was reading through a recent Keith Brown article on security in the .net Framework 2.0, and noticed this little gem: System.Diagnostics Besides a whole boatload of new tracing and debugging features, better event log support and even a Stopwatch, there...

Fellow Microsoftie Jonathan Hardwick has provided a new resource for information on running/developing using LUA: http://nonadmin.editme.com The site is set up as a wiki, so you can register and contribute to the site, too, if you choose. Thanks to Jonathan...

I found a trackback to my recent post wishing for 2005 to be the Year of Least Privilege, and unfortunately, the response repeats one of the major misconceptions of Least Privilege user accounts: G. Andrew Duthie asks: " Will 2005 be the year of Least...

My thanks to all who came out for my presentation with Aaron Margosis last night at the Capital Area .NET Users Group . We had around 30 people, and Aaron and I quite enjoyed the strong interaction with the attendees. Hopefully, we convinced some folks...

Interested in finding out more about the benefits of running with least privilege, and how you can do so without experiencing pain, or giving up power? Come to tonight's meeting of the Capital Area .NET Users Group , where I'll be speaking on the subject...

MSDN has just published part 2 of Michael Howard's discussion of strategies for browsing the web and reading email more safely if you absolutely must log onto your day-to-day machine as Administrator. Regular readers know I recommend against this, as...