he media surrounding the effectiveness of Windows Vista's new security features has (in my opinion) just begun. Microsoft's reach is well beyond that of any other software vendor in the world, and with this achievement comes fame, power, and a corporate life under a microscope. To honor this tradition, I previously posted an entry about the effects of malicious code executed under a default Vista environment; if you haven't read it, you are certainly encouraged to. This research has now been completed and this new entry should serve as a compliment to my previous post. A paper detailing the full research has been made available here.
The long anticipated Windows Vista operating system is finally out the door and as anyone would agree, it’s celebration time at Microsoft. But, let’s discuss what we are in for with a peek at the default user environment on the 32-bit platform.
Symantec Advanced Threat Research decided to conduct an analysis of Windows Vista’s security enhancements provided by the user account control (UAC) and resulting new security barriers. No formal requirements were defined, although a few guidelines were set to stay organized; gather a sample set of malicious code, execute them under the default UAC environment, and carefully determine their success. The results were then broken down into three categories: 1) Successful execution of malicious code 2) System restart survivability 3) Failed execution of malicious code, and why
There are two important prerequisites in place to establish fair play practices: 1) All malicious code must be...
