18 ms·

He's wrong. We do need an expert mode, at least to remove UAC in a simple way and allow us to mess around at will. Let's see, UAC is nice for your grandmother

by YaBa 3y ago

He's wrong. We do need an expert mode, at least to remove UAC in a simple way and allow us to mess around at will. Let's see, UAC is nice for your grandmother who might click on something that it shouldn't, yet, we, advanced users are constantly annoyed by those cof,cof "security" features who get in the way when doing something. Yet, your grandmother will eventually get ransomware or malware despite the UAC and other features, so, what's the point!??! At the moment I just remember UAC, but there are plenty of features that we want to turn off with a simple button and we can't, unless we play around with the registry or 3rd party apps. And this is why power users love Linux, we can do whatever we want, if we break it, it's fine and we can learn with it. At this rate, your computer will no longer be "your" computer, Microsoft will own it and you will like it.

dist-epoch 3y ago
UAC is the Windows equivalent of sudo. Do you disable sudo on your Linux box or run everything as root?
- Longhanks 3y ago
  You can absolutely log in as root and run anything with no questions asked. Where’s that login for windows for those who want that?
  - jkrejcha 3y ago
    You can login as Administrator if you enable the user account. You can also just turn admin approval mode to "never ask" in the Control Panel. While you can't login as SYSTEM (since it's not really a user account), you can trivially open a shell under it's account (and you can do everything you need as an administrator anyway, so there's really no point).
  - RulerOf 3y ago
    I used to use a PowerShell snippet for adding SeBackupPrivilege and SeRestorePrivilege to an app or explorer window. That will let you read/write anywhere on disk.
- YaBa 3y ago
  Not really, you use sudo when needed, at your will, not when Linux thinks you need it. I can just setuid some executable, how do you do it with Windows?
malfist 3y ago
Another example, for the love of God, let me disable windows defender without jumping through a bunch of hoops or installing another antivirus.
- RunSet 3y ago
  https://www.sordum.org/9480/defender-control-v2-1/ https://www.sordum.org/9480/defender-control-v2-1/
mschuster91 3y ago
> Let's see, UAC is nice for your grandmother who might click on something that it shouldn't, yet, we, advanced users are constantly annoyed by those cof,cof "security" features who get in the way when doing something. Even for us power users, we might hit some drive-by exploit, a friend might send us something that got wormed or whatever. And now, unless that malware comes with a UAC bypass/privilege escalation exploit which is worth millions of dollars, we get an unexpected UAC prompt and have a chance to stop a minute and actually notice that something is Not Right.
- dist-epoch 3y ago
  Unfortunately as more and more software is installed only for the user (in AppData), the malware can just infect a binary from there (Chrome, Discord, VS Code, ....)
  - josephg 3y ago
    Yeah - I’ve had this rant more times than I can count. Modern PC security is stupid because it protects users from other users (what other users?) but it doesn’t protect users from bad software they run on their own account. When the computer only has 1 user anyway, there isn’t much practical difference between the root user and my user account. But the elephant in the room is software supply chain attacks and malware. The fact any program I run can do anything it wants with all my files is ridiculous and appalling. Phones get it right. The Facebook app on my phone can’t read Gmail’s data. And Gmail can’t access my photos without permission. On desktop any program can read or write to any of my files. And my files - photos, work, code - matter a lot more to me than anything my OS works hard to protect. There’s no good technical reason, either. It’s a problem of pure inertia.
    - vondur 3y ago
      Apple kind of does this with the MacOS now. It will continuously ask you for each app to give it permissions to specific folders (downloads, home directory) plus can the app use the camera, the microphone etc.. I feel like most people blindly just tap yes to get it out of the way and use the app they just installed.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by YaBa 3y ago

dist-epoch 3y ago

UAC is the Windows equivalent of sudo. Do you disable sudo on your Linux box or run everything as root?

Longhanks 3y ago
You can absolutely log in as root and run anything with no questions asked. Where’s that login for windows for those who want that?
- jkrejcha 3y ago
  You can login as Administrator if you enable the user account. You can also just turn admin approval mode to "never ask" in the Control Panel. While you can't login as SYSTEM (since it's not really a user account), you can trivially open a shell under it's account (and you can do everything you need as an administrator anyway, so there's really no point).
- RulerOf 3y ago
  I used to use a PowerShell snippet for adding SeBackupPrivilege and SeRestorePrivilege to an app or explorer window. That will let you read/write anywhere on disk.
YaBa 3y ago
Not really, you use sudo when needed, at your will, not when Linux thinks you need it. I can just setuid some executable, how do you do it with Windows?

malfist 3y ago

Another example, for the love of God, let me disable windows defender without jumping through a bunch of hoops or installing another antivirus.

RunSet 3y ago
https://www.sordum.org/9480/defender-control-v2-1/ https://www.sordum.org/9480/defender-control-v2-1/

mschuster91 3y ago

> Let's see, UAC is nice for your grandmother who might click on something that it shouldn't, yet, we, advanced users are constantly annoyed by those cof,cof "security" features who get in the way when doing something. Even for us power users, we might hit some drive-by exploit, a friend might send us something that got wormed or whatever. And now, unless that malware comes with a UAC bypass/privilege escalation exploit which is worth millions of dollars, we get an unexpected UAC prompt and have a chance to stop a minute and actually notice that something is Not Right.

dist-epoch 3y ago
Unfortunately as more and more software is installed only for the user (in AppData), the malware can just infect a binary from there (Chrome, Discord, VS Code, ....)
- josephg 3y ago
  Yeah - I’ve had this rant more times than I can count. Modern PC security is stupid because it protects users from other users (what other users?) but it doesn’t protect users from bad software they run on their own account. When the computer only has 1 user anyway, there isn’t much practical difference between the root user and my user account. But the elephant in the room is software supply chain attacks and malware. The fact any program I run can do anything it wants with all my files is ridiculous and appalling. Phones get it right. The Facebook app on my phone can’t read Gmail’s data. And Gmail can’t access my photos without permission. On desktop any program can read or write to any of my files. And my files - photos, work, code - matter a lot more to me than anything my OS works hard to protect. There’s no good technical reason, either. It’s a problem of pure inertia.
  - vondur 3y ago
    Apple kind of does this with the MacOS now. It will continuously ask you for each app to give it permissions to specific folders (downloads, home directory) plus can the app use the camera, the microphone etc.. I feel like most people blindly just tap yes to get it out of the way and use the app they just installed.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]