January 31, 2009, 8:17 PM — A change that Microsoft made in Windows 7 to improve its controversial User Account Control security feature has left the new OS less secure, according to a blogger who follows Microsoft closely.
Microsoft made the change to UAC, a feature that was introduced with Windows Vista, to make it more user-friendly in Windows 7. But the change has allowed for "a simple but ingenious override" that disables UAC without any action on the part of the user, according to the I Started Something blog written by longtime Microsoft watcher Long Zheng.
Microsoft added UAC to Vista in an effort to improve its security and give people who are the primary users of a PC more control over its applications and settings. UAC prevents users without administrative privileges from making unauthorized changes to a system. But because of how it was set up in Vista, UAC sometimes prevents even authorized users from being able to access applications and features they should normally have access to.
It does this through a series of screen prompts that ask the user to verify privileges, and it may require them to type in a password to perform a task. This can interrupt people's workflow, even during some mundane tasks, unless they are set as Local Administrator. The UAC prompts became so problematic that Apple even spoofed them in a television commercial, and Microsoft vowed to improve the feature in Windows 7.
Windows 7 is still in beta and not expected to ship until late this year or early next. Microsoft released the beta earlier this month and outlined the changes to UAC on the Engineering Windows 7 blog.
The changes revise the UAC's default setting, and that is where the security risk lies, according to Zheng.
As he explained in his post, UAC's default setting in Windows 7 is to “Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer” and “Don’t notify me when I make changes to Windows settings."
UAC distinguishes between a third-party program and a Windows setting with a security certification, and control-panel items are signed with this certificate so they don't issue prompts if a user changes system settings, he wrote.
However, in Windows 7, changing UAC is considered a "change to Windows settings," according to Zheng. This, coupled with the new default UAC security level, means a user will not be prompted if changes are made to UAC, including if it was disabled.
With a few keyboard shortcuts and some code, Zheng said he can disable UAC remotely without the end-user knowing.
"With the help of my developer side-kick Rafael Rivera, we came up with a fully functional proof-of-concept in VBScript (would be just as easy in C++ EXE) to do that -- emulate a few keyboard inputs -- without prompting UAC," he wrote. "You can download and try it out for yourself here, but bear in mind it actually does disable UAC."
Zheng also posted what he said is a workaround for the problem on his blog.
Microsoft said on Friday through its public relations firm that it was looking into the problem and did not have an immediate comment.
