6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Vista LUA (or now UAC)

Dinis Cruz @ Owasp .Net Project — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 15:10:23 GMT

Note: LUA (Least User Access) has been
renamed UAC (User Access Control) which is a much better name...

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Jim Lewis — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 18:54:50 GMT

This capability should go a long way towards improving Windows security!

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Justin Stoddart — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 01:41:19 GMT

This is really good idea and i hope they devolop this in vista server as everyone could be a standard user and it could potientaly stop iruses from corropting system files and crashing systems

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 04:49:59 GMT

I know you said you would be blogging on this in the future... but for option 5; I thought the idea was to ensure that permission was granted each time before anything automatically executes with admin priviledges. Why would you not want to enable this by default on either the Home or Enterprise?

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

User Account Control Team — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 01:34:14 GMT

I want to touch on two comments here:

UAC actually stands for User Account Control. :-)

Setting 5 deals with the identification of signed binaries. There is different behavior for signed and unsigned executables. We'll be posting a more thorough post for this soon!

-Jenn

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Farhan — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 10:31:20 GMT

vista

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Gaute — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:48:59 GMT

A comment on the policy for 2) Behavior of the elevation prompt for standard user.

I would like to have some other options in addition to Prompt for credentials/Prompt for consent/No Prompt:

1) Prompt a configurable text box - e.g. requesting the user to call service desk for assistance.

2) Open Remote Assitance directly to service desk.

3) Open IE on a specified URL. On this site users could get local admin one time privilegies for e.g. a fee.

It is all about communication properly with end users that do not have local admin priveligies. "Access denied"-messages does not help them nor does it explain anything.

User Account Control Prompts on the Secure Desktop

UACBlog — Thu, 04 May 2006 04:42:10 GMT

Imagine stopping at a gas station to fuel up your car, selecting Standard grade unleaded gasoline, and...

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

RJakiel — Fri, 05 May 2006 00:04:33 GMT

Interesting approach at security but how many home users do you really think are going to make use of this? For that matter how many home users are actually going to come here or look up how to implement this properly? My guess is the avg. home user which this OS is being marketed to is going to get frustrated, disable it all and go back to the standard windows security model, i.e.: NONE. I just see this as too little too late for home users although corporate admins and users may find this appealing they won't be migrating to Vista anytime soon.

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

RMA — Fri, 05 May 2006 23:59:28 GMT

This stuff is such a pain - because it does not "cache" common responses. Consider a sys admin - how many times must they be prompted to run task manager to view all processes ? the system should learn traits for a user - and at least autmatically answer common scenarios - or in effect it WILL be turned off. I find it infinately frustrating. You cant pass gass in VISTA without nanny prompting you for premission. I wonder what my MOM will do, she wont knopw what it is asking for and will jsut hit allow every time - or she wont be able to do things. Also note that many many install shield custom actions now operate in user context - where they never did before. I estimate 90% of custom actions that expect to write registry entries or write to program files will fail now - and in some cases there is no work around ! even custom actions in VS 2005 projects cannot be set to run elevated !

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

none — Wed, 17 May 2006 23:37:49 GMT

another reason to try linux

Windows Vista User Account Control (UAC) - love it?

Keith Combs' Blahg — Thu, 18 May 2006 18:34:38 GMT

There has been a raging debate inside and outside of Microsoft about the new security feature in Windows...

Windows Vista Build 5208

Abed — Mon, 22 May 2006 17:29:57 GMT

I am currently playing with Vista and most of normal way of things have changed, some good others, too cumbersome to find. For example, it is not easy to switch the logon page. 2. How can i turn off the welcome page
3.with xp if you have local admin rights, right clicking the start button gives you option to open all users. I understand this is Beta but some things need to be easy to navigate

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

J Allen — Thu, 25 May 2006 20:24:43 GMT

Abed:

"It is not easy to switch the logon page"

Are you referring to the text displayed on the actual logon page, or are you speaking about customizing the GINA?

"How can i turn off the welcome page?"
After you log on, the Welcome Center will appear. In the bottom left hand corner of the page, there is a checkbox marked "Run at Startup (Welcome Center can be found in Control Panel, System and Maintenance)." This box is checked by default. Uncheck it to stop the Welcome Center from appearing at startup.

"With xp if you have local admin rights, right clicking the start button gives you option to open all users"

This is also the behavior in Windows Vista. If you right-click the Start button in Beta 2, you get the following options:

-Open
-Explore
-Search...
-Properties
-Open All Users
-Explore All Users

-Jenn

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

User Account Control Team — Fri, 26 May 2006 01:53:37 GMT

I wanted to address the post by RJakiel and by RMA here:

It may be true that users find these UAC prompts to be too complex or frustrating to deal with for a while, but the default state of “UAC On” and “2nd User is a Standard User” will drive something very important in the industry: writing software that by default works as Standard User. We are definitely in a state of “pain” at the moment with the number of elevation prompts that you are seeing in FebCTP and (somewhat better) in Beta2. But we believe that the OS elevations will be reduced dramatically for the HOME user by the time we ship Windows Vista.

We hope that the reality will become:
1. You rarely see an elevation prompt.
2. You understand that if you see an elevation prompt, it is because you just asked the system to run setup on something
3. You understand that if you did NOT initiate the action that caused the elevation prompt, that you should cancel the elevation.
4. You understand that signed apps are better than unsigned apps because they give you more information about the reason for the elevation.

The home user may see prompts during their initial setup as they reload their applications, but after that, they should only see OS elevation prompts when they do something that changes the system… such as changing Parental Control settings etc.

Note that Linux already has this model… the advantage that Linux currently enjoys is that ISVs automatically have to understand and respect the difference between a “Standard User” account and an “admin” account.

We also hope that if UAC really is annoying, you won’t turn UAC off, that instead you will set it to a state where you silently elevate. This isn’t a good state because malware can also silently elevate on your behalf (thus breaking item 3 above), but at least your Explorer, Messenger, email client, Browser etc will run as non-admin which will provide some barrier.

Now on to the caching of common responses. This is dangerous. We have not ruled it out yet, but are resisting due to the threats that it brings up. For example, if everybody knows that home uses have MMC marked as “silently elevate” because they set the “silent” bit during the install phase, then malware, running as a non-elevated application can start MMC and give it parameters that will drive it without user consent. You would in effect be able to create an admin account or change policy. If we added the “silent” bit, it would probably only be for 3rd party (non-OS) software.

Where does that leave the enterprise admin though? Some of the frustration from multiple elevation prompts can be mitigated by the enterprise admin starting an admin window (cmd.exe) first and then launching admin apps from that window. Admin apps have admin children without an additional elevation prompt.

Hopefully by the time your Mom uses Vista, we will have many of the annoying elevations in the OS gone. For example, Mom will be able to “get all critical updates” without elevation and will be able to delete icons off the public desktop without elevation. We are also busily shimming and fixing the top 1000+ applications so that they run correctly out of the box for Mom.

Don’t give up on the feature yet. We are working to change the way EVERYBODY runs Windows. That will take some restarts, rethinking, pain for the ISV (internal MS and external MS) and some pain for the user as we re-educate them on the issue and what to do with the elevation dialog.

I was explaining what I do at work to my uncle. He is a retired lawyer. After I explained what an administrator was and why, on XP, our default state runs IE as administrator just so it can browse web pages with potential malicious intent, he response was “why are you letting me run that way??!?” Microsoft is trying to take the high road here to change the way 800 million people run Windows. Help us out by finding the bugs, filing them, pushing on your favorite ISV to run well as Standard User etc.

Thanks for your post!

Steve

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Robert — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 19:39:07 GMT

i think the UAC is a good feature but missing one important facet. as a developer i regularly have to drop dll's and such into the system path and after some testing delete them or remove them or hey even edit some types and thier is no way to do that. do i have to reinstall windows to delete an inf or dll or ocx that i had to experiment with?

No a common user should not have this ability.
YES a developer or true admin level should.
YES this means that the ability to do this should be in place for every owner of a machine. warn them that its dangerous and not supported. warn them with all the popups you need to. make it so that that level access is not installed without going to add/remove and adding the feature or just a user account type not used unless user specifically goes there.

i cannot express how important that is.

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

John Reid — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 18:20:22 GMT

I installed BETA2 and was a little disappointed to find that Windows insists that the first account is the administrator - and there is no way around this.

Although you obviously need the admin account - shouldn't home user's be prompted to create a standard admin account password with a "remember this password: you'll need it to install stuff" prompt, and THEN set up user accounts.

Surely the point of UAC means that standard users are the norm - not administrators with big, nasty dialog boxes that allow the end user to say "Yeah, whatever" and click the 'Allow' button.

Another thing I noticed - IE7+ brings up the UAC dialog before letting the user know what the 3rd party application is. Usually this is Flash, but you have to allow before you know what it's going to be. A bit daft - but I imagine that will change before the release version.

I just hope that it works in the Linux style, as opposed to being an annoyance that people switch off.

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Ian Edwards — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 00:53:00 GMT

I guess I'm a little late coming to this particular party - but I just found out about UAC.

How to console based applications work with UAC? Does the GUI prompt appear for them too when they are launched?

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Richard Carpenter — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 07:55:48 GMT

A Typical Example of UAC in practice:
I am trying to install a Microsoft Application "Windows Mobile 5.0 SDK for Smartphone". The messagebox that comes up displays "The system Administrator has set policies to prevent this installation".
Firstly, "I AM THE BLOODY SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR" and I NEVER set these policies. It is typical of Microsoft and Software in general that they know better than me. I have now disabled all UAC settings and the error is still there. It would actually be useful if it displayed what the offending policy was.
What is needed is a simple "F*** Off" Button that left you alone instead of legislating for the lowest common demoninator approach that applies to all aspects of humanity.

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

teknokratus — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 08:03:11 GMT

User account control is awful. It's horribly annoying. I'm turning it off.

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

thegaddman — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 13:00:45 GMT

I think this may be missing the main practical corporate requirement.

Many standard users have requirements for particular admin tasks where they Always need the permission to do the work - ie. changing the system clock.. or performing an ipconfig /release..

This is what I would like as an admin to grant them to be able to do without them having to hassle me each time..

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

brave_the_storm — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 04:17:36 GMT

I've been working with Vista RC1 for about a week now. I have to say a lot of it I'm really enjoying. Tabbed browing, Program Manager for Startup Applications, Gadgets, Improved networking, Windows Media functionality, and more.

UAC is not one of the features I'm enjoying. To me it reminds me of 'dummed' down sharing we learned how to turn off in XP. If you want power users to use UAC please think about the following features:

1) Allow us to EASILY decide what should require elevation. For instance I'm cool with installs asking for elevation. I DON'T like having to elevate to COPY a txt file into the program files directory.

2) If we get to do #1, then please let us decide if the 'windows shield' turns red or green. My only option now is 'Turn off Shield' totally because it will always be red since UAC is off. I really like the shield feature in XP since it tells me VERY useful feedback like someone hasn't updated the virus scanner or the firewall is down.

The concepts outlined above seem very nice for a user --if-- as promised the elevate goes away. The problem I've had with RC1 is I have to do it a LOT and run a LOT of programs with Administrator rights to even get them to work.

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

John — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 03:48:06 GMT

I'd like to see a per-application setting that allows the user to select the desired elevation level, similar to the opt-in settings for IE browser hosts. I really would like to launch Visual Studio with a double-click, like I used to do, rather than right-click and "Run as administrator." (Without full access rights, VS can't self-register DLLs that it compiles.)

I don't care if there isn't a pretty UI for this feature. In fact, I would rather have it hidden in the bowels of the Security Policy Manager. But, the fact that some of the applications that I use every day will always require extra privileges, means that I will always need to remember to launch them from a right-click...and click again to respond to UAC.

Windows Vista--building new habits of interaction.

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

John — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 05:04:51 GMT

Follow-up: I just discovered that you can modify the short-cut properties to always run the application as an administrator. Select Properties of the shortcut, click the Advanced button, and check the "Run as administrator" check box. Click OK...

It still pops the UAC dialog, but I never have to remember if I launched the app properly!

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies, Console Appliations with Command Line Parameters

David Bennett — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 21:41:20 GMT

We have a pretty complex product developed under XP, and it installs just fine under Vista.

Occasionally the product’s configuration needs tweaked by a console application. The console application accepts command line parameters. These command line parameters are needed to specify the required console application behavior.

The application will “Run as Administrator”, if it is right clicked on in the file browser; however, I see no facility to pass command line arguments to the console application.

What is the best way to handle this scenario?

Thanks much,

David.

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Bert — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 19:18:44 GMT

I agree, UAC is &^%#^*%#(@^%(*@%^@. One should be able to this of with just one setting somewhere. It's not up to MS to decide what I do on my system. I wonder how common user are going to experience this, al this extra clicking around, I wonder if this will generate more RSI ..........................

Microsoft, please solve this issue, at least for system admins.

Bert

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Bert — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 19:18:45 GMT

Microsoft, please solve this issue, at least for system admins.

Bert

Learn How to Disable Vista's UAC, and Why You Shouldn't | ITsVISTA

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re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Vadym — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 13:33:56 GMT

How can I off in Vista all administrative polices for Running program and work with program as Administrator.

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Pragya — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 13:31:44 GMT

Please tell me why i am not able to create folder inside program files using "mkdir" command in command prompt which i was able to do earlier with XP , 2000 ...

I am facing real Problems even if i have logged in as administrator its saying access denied ...

So all my applications are going for a toss now .....

Will it be changed in near future???

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Steve — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 01:35:32 GMT

The sad thing is that there is a perfectly good model for doing this on other operating systems already. In reinventing UAC Microsoft decided to go with the "Lets annoy the user until they turn the feature off" design.

Why not do what everyone else does. Ask the user to Authenticate (password required) and then allow all activity for the next X (usually 5) minutes to work at Admin level. This avoids 90% of the problems that users encounter.

See how much easier that is? Is there a requirement at MS to only implement solutions that treat the users as idiots?

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

chris — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 23:26:04 GMT

every time I want to download and install something a window pops up asking for the administrator password. My sister won't give me the password so each time I have to bother her to type it in. It's annoying and I'd like to know how to turn it off.

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Shannon — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 20:06:34 GMT

I'm a setup developer, so this is a pain in my neck professionally, but it isn't much better personally. After having used Vista for a just an hour or so, I was already completely fed up with the UAC features. There are entirely too many prompts! Just to create a text file on C:\ (a logfile, I believe) and then delete it a moment later, I had to clear four warning dialogs. If I know myself, it won't take long before I stop seeing or reading those dialogs, click "Allow" to everything, and sooner or later defeat the whole purpose of this exercise in security.

Shannon: The root of the C: drive has never been a good place to write files. A lot of apps fail to work correctly as standard user because the developer thought it was always safe to write files there. Try creating the log file in the current user's Documents or Temp folders instead.

HTH

-- Aaron Margosis

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

John — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 01:44:50 GMT

I cant seem to find the Local Security Settings as shown at the top of this blog. Searched for Local Security Settings and Local Security Policy, SEC. Using Vista Home Premium final retail. Is access to theses setting availiable only in Vista Ultimate?

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

Aaron Margosis — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 01:47:45 GMT

John: Try running secpol.msc.

HTH

-- Aaron Margosis

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

John — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 18:14:07 GMT

Aaron, Thanks for the reply. After looking into it further I found out that secpol.msc is not availiable on the home editions of vista. I am able to turn UAC on and off though. I have read mixed reviews on turning it off altogether though. I am pretty computer savy but far from an expert. UAC is quite annoying especially when you get a warning every time you try to copy files. Am I missing somthing about UAC? or is it really necessary.

re: 6 User Account Control Windows Vista Policies

John — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 18:24:17 GMT

Ok now I am really confused. I actually did find secpol.msc and was able to launch it but the error message "MMC could not create the snap-in" was displayed in the pane where the policys would normally be listed. Pehaps it is just crippled under the Home editions??? BTW I an logged in as a Administrator.

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