Replace Windows Vista UAC with Smart UAC Replacement
In past we had review Norton UAC tool an alternative for default Windows Vista user access control. Now here is yet another similar Vista UAC replacement tool Smart UAC Replacement which is easier, more comfortable and definitely less irritating than the standard Windows UAC.
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27.9.2009 Hacking Firefox: The secrets of about:config
Ever since its debut, Firefox has garnered a reputation for being an enormously customizable program, both through its add-on architecture and its internal settings. In fact, many of Firefox's settings aren't exposed through the Tools > Options menu; the only way to change them is to edit them manually.
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29.5.2007 Microsoft Frowns on iDefense Hacking Challenge
Security intelligence outfit iDefense Labs is offering a $10,000 reward to any hacker who finds a worm hole in Microsoft's products, but the software maker isn't exactly thrilled by the gambit.
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23.2.2006 Windows 7 UAC, the Evolution
One of the aspects of Windows Vista that is going to evolve in Windows 7 is the User Account Control.
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9.10.2008 Windows 7 UAC has a second flaw
Long Zheng of I Started Something has uncovered a flaw in Windows 7's UAC that means malware can elevate itself to administrator privileges.
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4.2.2009 Microsoft neuters UAC in Windows 7
In an attempt to make Windows 7 generate fewer UAC (User Account Control) prompts Microsoft has neutered the mechanism to the point where it’s next to useless.
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30.1.2009 Fixing Windows Vista: Taming UAC
The User Account Control feature in Windows Vista has been known to drive normally level-headed people over the edge with frustration. If you find it annoying, you might be tempted to turn it off.
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1.5.2008 Microsoft: Update on Windows 7 UAC issues
Before getting into the actual news, lets take a while to understand the current Windows 7 UAC dilemma
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5.2.2009 Has Windows Vista's UAC feature failed Microsoft?
Experts agree that Microsoft's Windows Vista is relatively well-protected, but its security features — such as User Account Control (UAC) — have been highlighted by security experts as one reason why the operating system is far less popular than its predecessor, Windows XP.
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20.5.2008 Turn Off or Disable User Account Control (UAC) in Windows Vista
User Account Control (UAC) is a new security feature in Windows Vista that requires all users to log on and run in standard user privileges mode instead of as administrator with full administrative rights, thus prevent unauthorized or accidental changes that could destabilize the computers or allows virus and malware to exploit the system-level privileges provided to the local administrator to attack the network security, compromise computer safety and privacy, and damage files and settings in the network.
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19.12.2006 Getting Rid of UAC in Vista..
gurk2005 prepare this for you on his blog. If you’ve used Windows Vista for more than 3.7 minutes, you know what UAC (User Account Control) is..
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5.8.2007 Symantec: Vista UAC Is Still Too Chatty
In positioning itself to provide aftermarket applications for Microsoft's Vista operating system, anti-virus market leader Symantec is highlighting some shortcomings it believes to exist in the new platform's own security tools.
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15.1.2007 Microsoft: UAC not a security feature
For those who thought the User Account Control (UAC) feature introduced in Windows Vista was intended to set security boundaries, Microsoft has made a clarification: it isn't.
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15.2.2007 Vista’s UAC needs an overhaul. Ideas?
It seems like everyone, other than possibly Microsoft's Vista team itself, seems to believe that the User Account Control (UAC) in Vista already needs an overhaul. The question is, who is going to do it? And what form will it take?
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22.2.2007 Dear Microsoft: Please get UAC right this time
UAC could certainly have been handled better. It does something the security industry has been well aware of for a long time — it creates the “cry wolf” problem of popup fatigue (people turn off or ignore the popups after awhile).
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30.5.2008 Microsoft backpedals on UAC flaw
After initially describing the ability for code to change UAC (user account Control) levels on Windows 7 beta without generating a UAC prompt as “by design” Microsoft has now agreed to make changes to the Release Candidate code to tighten up security with regards to this issue.
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6.2.2009 Vista UAC: 7 Steps to delete a shortcut
Here is a interesting submission, although I'd like to point out that Microsoft is changing this behavior in future builds. Here's what would of happened if it weren't for dedicated beta testers and our loud vocal concerns being heard.
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5.6.2006 Suggestion for the Universally Annoying Creation (UAC)
I like to think of UAC as Universally Annoying Creation, because in the history of Windows this is the one thing that really ****es me off. Many people have ranted about it but not really come up with a solution to this annoyance.
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6.9.2006 Russinovich: Malware will thrive, even with Vista’s UAC
Despite all the anti-malware roadblocks built into Windows Vista, a senior Microsoft official is lowering the security expectations, warning that viruses, password-stealing Trojans and rootkits will continue to thrive as malware authors adapt to the new operating system.
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24.4.2007 Analyst: Vista's UAC Will Reform Developers
When it comes to the new security functions in Windows Vista, User Account Control is the one people tend to scratch their heads over, Gartner Analyst Neil MacDonald said during his presentation on implementing Vista security at Gartner's IT Security Summit here on June 4.
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8.6.2007 Malware breaks Win 7 UAC defenses
A recently conducted test by malware researchers reveals that eight out of ten malware samples used in the test, successfully bypassed Windows 7’s default UAC (user access control) settings.
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7.11.2009 Microsoft: All operating systems should use Vista's UAC security
Microsoft Australia has defended the company's User Account Control (UAC) system as being "misunderstood" and said it should be the type of technology that all operating systems aspire towards.
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29.4.2007 Researcher Reveals 2-Step Vista UAC Hack
A Web application developer has uncovered a two-step process (PDF) for exploiting Windows Vista's User Account Control, essentially by having a Trojan piggyback on what could be a legitimate download.
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17.5.2007 Disabling UAC Slows Vista's Bootup Time?
Blogger Chris123NT is reporting that the LUAFV driver, which controls UAC in Vista, can cause latency issues if the controversial feature is disabled.
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15.12.2007 Microsoft Exec: UAC Designed To Annoy Users
The User Account Control in Windows Vista improves security by reducing application privileges from administrative to standard levels, but UAC has been widely criticized for the nagging alerts it generates.
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11.4.2008 Vistas Despised UAC Nails Rootkits, Tests Find
Love or hate its nagging prompts, Vista's Account Control feature (UAC) has a security feature that marks it out from any other type of Windows security programme -- it can spot rootkits before they install.
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25.5.2008 Windows 7 UAC – Control, Control, Control
In the next version of the Windows client, end users will be able to customize the level of nagging that the operating system generates via the User Account Control, revealed Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, on behalf of the team building the feature. Sinofsky emphasized that, as early as Windows 7 pre-Beta Milestone 3 Build 6801, users of the operating system would be able to see a reduction in the volume of prompts associated with UAC.
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16.1.2009 Vista SP1, and then Windows 7, Windows 8 and Non-Windows Midori
2008 saw the release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Windows Server 2008, but Microsoft's journey on the Windows path is far from over.
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5.8.2008 Windows 7 RC Brings Windows XP Mode Beta and Windows Virtual PC Beta
The Release Candidate of Windows 7 will bring with it the first Beta development milestones for Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC.
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29.4.2009 Windows Reactivator 2.0 - Backup & Restore Activation Status of Windows XP with Windows Reactivator
Every time you reinstall your windows XP you need to reactivate it online using your product key & worst if you lost your Windows XP product key.
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3.6.2009Microsoft listens, changes UAC behavior in Windows 7
Long Zheng and Rafael had come up with proof earlier that malware can turn off UAC in Windows 7. Later Microsoft responded insisting that this is by
design and actually not a bug. Microsoft has finally agreed to do changes to the Windows 7 UAC and deliver the changes to the Windows 7 Release
Candidate. Jon DeVann and Steven Sinofsky have blogged about the two changes Microsoft is planning to bring to Windows 7 RC: UAC control panel will
run in a high integrity process Changing the level of the UAC will also prompt for confirmation There you go! Simple changes, but brings out big
differences to the way UAC behaves in Windows 7!
Read full story.....
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06.02.2009Microsoft: Update on Windows 7 UAC issues
Before getting into the actual news, lets take a while to understand the current Windows 7 UAC dilemma Windows 7 UAC Dilemma As Windows 7 was
receiving much positive feedback than expected from the beta testers, we had Long Zheng and Rafael, two Windows enthusiasts, come with a proof that
malware can turn off UAC in Windows 7. Later Microsoft responded insisting that this is by design and actually not a bug. Later, again, we had Zheng
and Rafael come out with a second flaw which showed Windows 7 UAC was still flawed. At this time, everybody thought Microsoft had done the right thing
with Windows Vista UAC and compromised security over consumers' feedback in Windows 7.
Read full story.....
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05.02.2009Windows 7 UAC has a second flaw
Long Zheng of I Started Something has uncovered a flaw in Windows 7's UAC that means malware can elevate itself to administrator privileges. This
news comes after a previously discovered flaw in Windows 7's new tiered UAC system that meant malware can disable UAC silently. Zheng has stated
"a second UAC security flaw in the Windows 7 beta's default security configuration allows a malicious application to autonomously elevate
themselves to full administrative privileges without UAC prompts or turning UAC off", which is bad news for Microsoft. It is also bad news for all
the people currently running the Windows 7 beta, leaving them with a security risk.
Read full story.....
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04.02.2009Reporters booted from Black Hat Conference for hacking
Three French journalists have been shown the exit from the yearly hacking confab after it was discovered they were hacking into the press room's
Wi-Fi network...
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08.08.2008Fix Windows 7 Sidebar With UAC Off
As many of you undoubtedly know already, in Windows 7 Beta 1, disabling UAC also causes the gadgets to stop working. This can be very annoying,
especially for the power users who turn off UAC, or for those who are turning it off in order to avoid that nasty token elevation bug that rears it's
ugly head out of random on some machines...
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19.01.2009Windows 7 vs Windows Vista: The UAC Benchmark
One of the most hated features of Windows Vista is the
User Account
Control, or UAC in short. Many people found it annoying and chose to
disable it right away, even if this meant exposing their system to
additional security threats. In Windows 7, Microsoft has seriously changed this feature. Now users have a lot more control over it and how it works
and it should provide a better user experience. To see how much improvement this means in numbers, I have run a comparison between the default Windows
Vista and Windows 7 UAC levels. Let's see which one wins and why.
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05.08.2009Who should fix Microsoft's UAC?
One of the most discussed
features of Windows Vista is
the User Account Control (UAC)
feature. The UAC pops up
whenever something is
attempting to make use of
something that is in the
domain of the
administrator.
Many
users have complained that the
UAC is the "dialog that cries
wolf" in that it comes up so
often that users end up either
ignoring it or turning it off
-- both of which nullify the
purpose of the UAC.
ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley
argues that UAC needs an
overhaul and talks about some
of the discussions that are on
the way.
Will
Microsoft extend UAC to be
more flexible and usable by
users? Should it be left to a
Symantec to solve or should
Stardock (whom I work for)
extend it to support more
options?
What's
your view on the Windows Vista
UAC?
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22.02.2007Microsoft insists UAC vulnerability is not a flaw
Yesterday we reported on a major UAC security flaw where malicious hackers could potentially execute a script on a users machine by tricking into them
into opening a disguised exe. This script would disable UAC without user interaction and without the users knowledge. A Microsoft spokesperson has
provided Neowin with a response to the issue:This is not a vulnerability. The intent of the default configuration of UAC is that users don't get
prompted when making changes to Windows settings. This includes changing the UAC prompting level.
Read full story.....
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31.01.2009How Windows 7 UAC shapes enterprise security
There is a lot of buzz about the security features in the upcoming release of Microsofts Windows 7 operating system, especially User Account Control
(UAC).
Microsoft designed UAC to control the elevated śadministratorť privilege that is so dangerous from an IT security
perspective. UAC debuted in Windows Vista to help reduce privilege levels of all users, non-IT and IT employees alike, when tasks were being performed
that did not require elevation. Despite these good intentions, however, Vistas UAC received a tremendous amount of negative feedback due to the number
of śpop-upť windows that occur during routine use of the desktop. Windows 7 features a new approach to UAC, providing a śsliderť to control how often
UAC pop-ups occur and for which actions they are monitoring. The questions these changes raise include...
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27.03.2009UAC security flaw in Windows 7 beta (with proof of concept code)
Long Zheng: This is dedicated to every ignorant “tech journalist” who cried wolf about UAC in Windows Vista. A
change to User Account Control (UAC) in Windows 7
(beta) to make it “less annoying” inadvertently clears the path for a simple but ingenius override that renders UAC disabled without
user interaction. For the security conscious, a workaround is also provided at the end. First and foremost, I want to clear up two things...
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30.01.2009Windows 7: User Account Control (UAC) overview
In part one of our overview of Windows 7, we looked into Federated Search. In part two, we look into the much criticized feature of Windows Vista -
The User Account Control One of the highly criticized features in Windows Vista is the User Account Control(UAC) which prompts up a dialog box
seeking users' permission to continue or stop whenever a system-level change is made. The problem with Vista is that even the default user account
which is created during the install, who is a protected administrator (unlike in XP where the user is an Administrator), could not bypass the UAC
until its tweaked.
Read full story.....
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07.01.2009Opinion: Windows 7's UAC is a broken mess; mend it or end it
Peter Bright: I wrote
a few weeks ago about
changes Microsoft has made to Windows 7's User Account Control (UAC) that make the component less secure than it was in Vista. Though the company
has responded by saying it will change some of the problem behaviors, yet more problems have emerged that indicate that a real fix will be harder than
first expected. But more than that, the flaws call into question the entire purpose of the Windows UAC feature, at least in its commonplace "Admin
Approval" mode...
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07.03.2009Microsoft: Malware can disable UAC in Windows 7 "by design"
A month has barely passed since the public beta debut of Windows 7 and we have our first horror story. UAC (user account control) was the major gripe
with Windows Vista which annoyed most tech savvy users and confused ordinary consumers. Microsoft has changed the behavior in Windows 7, lowering the
requirement for user interaction when changing system settings. The apparent downside to this is, according to reports, the way Microsoft has changed
the behavior makes it extremely easy for malware authors to write code to disable UAC without user intervention.
Read full story.....
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30.01.2009Changes to UAC in Vista SP1: Much less than meets the eye
A video is making the rounds showing how Vista SP1 has significantly improved Vista's immensely annoying User Account Control (UAC). But there
appears to be less to the improvement than meets the eye --- hardly any changes were made to UAC in SP1, and it remains a very big Vista annoyance.
Microsoft blogger Michael Kleef
has
made a video that he says illustrates how much better UAC is under SP1 than before SP1. It very nicely shows that when you create a new folder in
Program Files, you only need to go through one UAC prompt under Vista SP1, rather than four previously.
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17.05.2008Has Windows Vista's UAC feature failed Microsoft?
Experts agree that Microsoft's Windows Vista is relatively well-protected, but its security features -- such as User Account Control (UAC) -- have
been highlighted by security experts as one reason why the operating system is far less popular than its predecessor, Windows XP.
According to Scott Charney, vice president of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group, UAC was designed to give users more control over the
applications they run and help them make better security decisions by providing them with more information.
However, the main
problem with Vista's UAC, according to Charney, is that it prompts the user far too often...
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20.05.2008PDC 2008: Sinofsky acknowledges Vista UAC is a problem, Windows 7 adds options
Giving a nod to developers who've apparently given a lot of feedback, as well as "certain commercials," Microsoft's platform chief Steven
Sinofsky acknowledged that perhaps User Account Control in Windows Vista may have been...a little annoying. In turn, Windows 7 has additional UAC
settings...
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28.10.2008Microsoft dismisses Windows 7 UAC security flaw, continues to insist it is "by design"
Long Zheng: I’m not too sure if Microsoft is on the same page as I am, but a Microsoft spokesperson has emailed me in response to the
Windows 7 UAC security flaw I wrote about and demonstrated
yesterday. In summary, Microsoft claims this is “not a vulnerability”, is intended behavior and again indicates will not be changed.
No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. They’re (again) indicating it will not be fixed in the final version of Windows 7.
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31.01.2009Symantec shows Microsoft how to do UAC
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: Security company Symantec has released a tool that helps to make Vista’s UAC (User Account Control) feature clearer and
less of a pain to use.
Norton UAC Tool (which, I
will warn you right from the start is currently in beta) is a replacement to the UAC prompts that you normally see. It has two usability-related
features to offer...
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11.10.2008Microsoft agrees to fix UAC security hole in Windows 7
It looks like after all the huffing and puffing, the house finally blew down. Via the Engineering 7 blog, Microsoft announced today that it has
changed it's mind regarding the
critical UAC security hole discovered in
Windows 7, and that it would indeed be fixed.
"
With this feedback and a lot more we are going to deliver two changes to the
Release Candidate that we’ll all see. First, the UAC control panel will run in a high integrity process, which requires elevation. That was already in
the works before this discussion and doing this prevents all the mechanics around SendKeys and the like from working. Second, changing the level of
the UAC will also prompt for confirmation." Microsoft initially declined to fix the issue stating that the behavior was by design
and that their decision was based on user feedback generated from Windows Vista.
What does this fix mean for the you? Now, even at the
default prompt level, making any changes to the UAC settings will generate a prompt, preventing malware from disabling UAC without you knowing.
Good job Microsoft, we knew you could do it!
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06.02.2009Microsoft: UAC security setting not changing (for now)
Via a hefty (but uncharacteristically responsive and timely) post to the Engineering Windows 7 blog, Microsoft officials said that they believe
the default User Account Control (UAC) security setting in Windows 7 is fine
as it is.
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05.02.2009
