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Please note the words “For any normal application” in my original post. Of course there will always be system software, some of it part of the operating system

Please note the words “For any normal application” in my original post. Of course there will always be system software, some of it part of the operating system and other parts coming from other sources. I’m not challenging that, I’m challenging the idea that the default should be for installed applications to have this kind of access. It’s just the principle of least privilege.

est 13y ago
They what happens next? Let the user to choose which app should have what access to which resource? It will be confusing. Your idea is there, but it's not practical. Let's just use the DNS example here. So VAC is md5 all DNS cache entries on Windows. How do cheaters get around this? Any program can use UDP socket, what prevents the cheaters directly craft DNS packets to an external DNS server? This completely avoids `DnsQuery_A` or `gethostbyname()` APi calls. So VAC need to sniff all UDP traffic to port 53?
- Chris_Newton 13y ago
  They what happens next? Let the user to choose which app should have what access to which resource? Yes, I think a lot more flexibility in the underlying security model could be useful for people like system administrators or “power users”. For “normal” users, it would obviously be important to keep things simple enough to understand or ideally completely transparent where that’s possible. This is why I’m a fan of ideas like the separation between general applications and system tools that I mentioned in another post. The default behaviour is the safest behaviour, which is normally what you want anyway. You can add a suitable level of scary warnings, signature/integrity checking, or whatever other safeguards might be appropriate if the user really does want to install software that will have greater access. Sure, some people will go ahead and say yes, obviously im_not_a_trojan_honest.exe received by e-mail from “Here’s COD4 Free!” looks legit and they should just click through everything and start playing. There is a limited amount you can do to help such people. But a lot of people are smarter than that and will take security at least somewhat seriously if it’s not too intrusive and they understand that “If in doubt, click no” is the basic rule. And of course for the geeks, or for people at work whose security settings are actually going to be configured by professional system administrators, different rules apply anyway.

est 13y ago

They what happens next? Let the user to choose which app should have what access to which resource? It will be confusing. Your idea is there, but it's not practical. Let's just use the DNS example here. So VAC is md5 all DNS cache entries on Windows. How do cheaters get around this? Any program can use UDP socket, what prevents the cheaters directly craft DNS packets to an external DNS server? This completely avoids `DnsQuery_A` or `gethostbyname()` APi calls. So VAC need to sniff all UDP traffic to port 53?

Chris_Newton 13y ago
They what happens next? Let the user to choose which app should have what access to which resource? Yes, I think a lot more flexibility in the underlying security model could be useful for people like system administrators or “power users”. For “normal” users, it would obviously be important to keep things simple enough to understand or ideally completely transparent where that’s possible. This is why I’m a fan of ideas like the separation between general applications and system tools that I mentioned in another post. The default behaviour is the safest behaviour, which is normally what you want anyway. You can add a suitable level of scary warnings, signature/integrity checking, or whatever other safeguards might be appropriate if the user really does want to install software that will have greater access. Sure, some people will go ahead and say yes, obviously im_not_a_trojan_honest.exe received by e-mail from “Here’s COD4 Free!” looks legit and they should just click through everything and start playing. There is a limited amount you can do to help such people. But a lot of people are smarter than that and will take security at least somewhat seriously if it’s not too intrusive and they understand that “If in doubt, click no” is the basic rule. And of course for the geeks, or for people at work whose security settings are actually going to be configured by professional system administrators, different rules apply anyway.