Opinion: Windows 7's UAC is a broken mess; mend it or end it

"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.

"The decisions Microsoft has made not only make Windows 7's Admin Approval mode less secure than Vista's, they also undermine the entire purpose of the UAC system. Redmond maintains that UAC's foremost objective is to ensure programmers update their programs to behave properly when users have limited access rights. But the way that the Windows 7 UAC "improvements" have been made completely exempts Microsoft's developers from having to do that work themselves. With Windows 7, it's one rule for Redmond, another one for everyone else."

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