Question about LUA

I dont know if this has been answered before but here is my question:If LUA AND SRP are so effective against all kinds of threats then why dont people use it instead of deploying an arsenal of security software? Thanks.

 

Some reasons:

1) People don't know about LUA and SRP.

2) Some people just really like security software. It makes them feel safe and gives something to play with.

3) Some people want more protection or at least more options and features than LUA or SRP offer. For example, if you just want to block some random executables from starting, SRP can work fine. But what if you want to allow starting any executable, but want it to run in a sandbox so it can't make any permanent alterations anywhere on the file system? SRP can't do that, but some security software can.

4) Some people use operating systems where LUA and/or SRP are not available easily. For example, DOS-based operating systems like Windows 98, or Home editions of Windows NT operating systems where SRP isn't available in the GUI.

 

And don't forget that until Vista, windows was always defaulted to admin. Being a member of the Users group is not new, but it might as well be to millions of windows users. It is a strange thing, a standard practice being seen as obscure in the dominant desktop OS.

Sul.

 

Some people prefer to run as Administrator rather than as a LUA, to be able to install/make changes/perform maintenance
without the extra step of escalating privileges. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to deploy "an arsenal of security software" in order to be safe.


----
rich

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[SIZE="-1"]Careful users run their own tests.[/SIZE]

 

I think it's mostly a case of most people are not aware of it, but very slowly I see that's changing now....

 

1) Some software doesn't work properly. Manual intervention can sometimes salvage the situation. For example, see Flash not working with SRP.
2) If you use a program in two different accounts, you'll usually need to configure the program's settings separately in each account.
3) Switching between different accounts can be a hassle.
4) Some software installs its menu shortcut in the current account only, and thus there is no shortcut to start the program within other accounts. This can be remedied manually.
5) If you want to elevate a program using UAC within a LUA, you normally need to supply a password each time, unless you use techniques such as those hightlighted at Avoid UAC prompts by using an elevated program launcher.
6) If you want to share program data, such as browser favorites, amongst different accounts, you won't be able to use default settings, which would typically result in each account having its own program data. I use a separate data partition, and store my data there, for read/write access by either my admin account or my LUA.

By the way, I actually do use LUA + AppLocker .

 

Thanks all for the replies.I guess people dont like the extra hassle.Anyways windows is more safer now than ever before.

 

the main hassle is setting it up, actually using it is very easy, I can game/browse do 99% of what I need in a LUA with SRP account without any slowdowns whatsoever.

I'm amazed at the number of people who complain about the inconvenience of a LUA yet they run firewalls with millions of popups, have multiple real time apps slowing the pc, and most annoying of all use firefox with 'noscript', easily the most annoying software I've ever used and much, much more inconvenient than a LUA account.

different strokes for different folks.

 

Simple: People don't know any better because Microsoft has not educated them nor even allowed LUA's in some versions of Windows (3.1-ME). This tradition of running as admin has persisted until today even though there are ways to easily do it. Microsoft is to blame -- they simply put zero emphasis on security in the first decade of Windows' existence. Even though things are much better now, people still are set in their old ways.

The second group to blame are third party developers; many of them still do not make their programs compatible with limited privileges. As a result many users who try LUA are instantly turned off because program X or Y wont work with it. This goes back to Microsoft's failure to provide Windows with a filesystem that can handle privileges (FAT16/32 cannot do privileges). Even though things changed with the NT kernel and the NTFS filesystem, the bad habits still persist where developers are concerned.