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> The modern Mac is a sea of Allow/Don't Allow prompts Remember when they used to mock this as part of their marketing? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUPxkz
by donnachangstein 1y ago
> The modern Mac is a sea of Allow/Don't Allow prompts
Remember when they used to mock this as part of their marketing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUPxkzV1RTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUPxkzV1RTc
- GeekyBear 1y agoWindows Vista would spawn a permissions prompt when users did something as innocuous as creating a shortcut on their desktop. Microsoft deserved to be mocked for that implementation.
- AStonesThrow 1y agoI once encountered malware on my roommate’s Windows 98 system. It was a worm designed to rewrite every image file as a VBS script that would replicate and re-infect every possible file whenever it was clicked or executed. It hid the VBS extensions and masqueraded as the original images. Creation of a shortcut on Windows is not necessarily innocuous. It was a common first vector to drop malware as users were accustomed to installing software that did the same thing. A Windows shortcut can hide an arbitrary pathname, arbitrary command-line arguments, a custom icon, and more; these can be modified at any time. So whether it was a mistake for UAC to be overzealous or obstructionist, or Microsoft was already being mocked for poor security, perhaps they weren’t wrong to raise awareness about such maneuvers.
- GeekyBear 1y agoA user creating a shortcut manually is not something that requires a permissions prompt. If you want to teach users to ignore security prompts, then completely pointless nagging is how you do it.
- esseph 1y agoPrograms running during the user session are often running as that user. The "correct answer" to this is probably that there isn't a good answer here. Security is a damn minefield and it's getting worse every day.
- GeekyBear 1y agoThere is no universe in which it makes sense to ask the very user who just created a shortcut if they should have permission to create that shortcut. This is why Microsoft was so widely mocked for just how bad their initial implementation of UAC was.
- esseph 1y ago"iPhone Shortcuts always asks permission to access file" https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254931245 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254931245 iOS Shortcut danger https://cyberpress.org/unveiling-risks-of-ios-shortcuts/ https://cyberpress.org/unveiling-risks-of-ios-shortcuts/ But anywho, cve.org lists 78 shortcut vulnerabilities across many platforms. I know you'd like to believe the world we live in shouldn't require permissions for a user to create a shortcut and then access it, but that... Is actually the world we live in, and have been in for a very long time. Security is hard and it's not getting any easier as system complexity increases. If you don't believe me, ask your favorite LLM. I asked Gemini and got back what I expected to.
- GeekyBear 1y agoIf the user manually creating a shortcut is so dangerous, why did Microsoft remove that permissions prompt when they fixed their terrible initial UAC implementation?
- Gigachad 1y agoMacOS asked a permission dialog when I plug my AirPods in to charge. I have no idea what I’m even giving permission for but it pops up every time.
- GeekyBear 1y agoAsking you if you trust a device before opening a data connection to it is simply not the same thing as asking the person who just created a shortcut if they should be allowed to do that.
- esseph 1y agoHow do you know the person created the shortcut and not some malware trying to get a user to click on an executable and elevate permissions?