Dana Epp's ramblings at the Sanctuary: Apple...you're a bunch of FUD monkies. You know dick about Vista security!


« Slidedeck of my "Threat Modeling and Information Asset Protection" presentation now available \| Main \| Life, the Universe, and where the hell is Dana? » February 09, 2007 Apple...you're a bunch of FUD monkies. You know dick about Vista security! I love the "Get a Mac" ads. They are quite funny, even if I don't always agree with them. But today I am calling bullsh*t to the ignorant and arrogant marketing department at Apple. You know dick about Vista security, and really should go back and sit in a corner and mumble about how you own the digital music world... because you don't have anything to be proud of in the security department. Or did you forget about the ugliness with the Month of Apple Bugs? I hate FUD. Fear, uncertainty and doubt is NOT needed in the security world; those people that use it to sell their wares do so because they have little positive to say about their own stuff. Funny enough, Michael Howard blogged about a similar issue with a person he knows. It's so easy to criticize without actually USING the product. I have been using Vista since the eary betas, and run it as a Standard User. I am in the most constrained environment you can be in a typical network environment, and I am lucky if I see a prompt once a day. Once your software is installed and configured, you won't see security prompts through UAC unless you do something that really needs privileges. And that is the perfect time TO have them come up. So get off the pot and actually USE Vista before you bad mouth UAC. You have no friggin clue what you are talking about. Susan says she is seeing the geeks at Best Buy disabling UAC so customers don't see the prompts. As I said last year, when set up properly Vista's UAC isn't there to hinder a user's experience. Rather it is there to inform the user when they take action that requires higher privileges and may be against the policy of the organization. Don't lose that. Don't disable UAC. And don't believe Apple's marketing. They don't know what the hell they are talking about. Posted by SilverStr at February 9, 2007 08:03 PM \| TrackBack Comments Whoa there, big fella ... I agree. I get more than my share of UACs, but it is because I have some of my threshholds (as with the OneCare Firewall) set severely high, and I get into flurries of giving permission. But it is always something I am doing or new software is doing. What's great about this is on XP SP2, some operations would silently fail unless I was already administrator. And if I did receive notification, it would simply say I have to be administrator to do something about it. Now, I have help switching to Run As Administrator, essentially, and it is a lot easier. I notice that I keep expecting UAC on my remaining XP systems, and I expect I can just get into Control Panel and elevate where needed. Drat! ... But then, I was always into running LUA and have a lot of patience around making sure I am operating safely. Posted by: orcmid at February 9, 2007 10:40 PM This has been my problem with the Apple adverts from the start - they're funny, yes, and they're great advertising, but they are, essentially, lies about Windows. Posted by: Alun Jones at February 10, 2007 09:25 AM And Windows marketing has never lied about Apple or other operating systems? You'd almost think that these ads were about selling a product instead of communicating absolute truth about it? :) Seriously, this has nothing to do with anything but marketting, just like when Microsoft was going around on their "Linux is a cancer and will impregnate your daughters" campaign, or apple with their snarky "photocopiers" ads. All of them have a varying degree of truth designed to exaggerate some aspect or other of a competitors weakness. Posted by: Arcterex at February 10, 2007 04:02 PM UAC has absolutely no business whatsoever popping up dialog boxes on common actions, which is why its disabled. Change screen resolution? Attach to a new wireless network on my laptop? Both bring up UAC prompts. Come on..give me a break! Posted by: Proteus at February 12, 2007 07:52 PM Indeed. You might like this as well http://www.matasano.com/log/611/gunar-petersons-os-security-features-chart/ Posted by: Gunnar at February 13, 2007 02:17 PM There's a good explanation of what's wrong with UAC at the bottom of this blog entry over at Peeve Farm, quoting an Information Week article: http://www.grotto11.com/blog/archive/1170530496.shtml . png Posted by: Peter G. at February 15, 2007 02:33 PM		My 5 Favorite Books Writing Secure Code Secure Programming Cookbook Security Engineering Secure Coding Principles & Practice Inside the Security Mind My 5 Favorite Papers Smashing the Stack Penetration Studies Covert Channel Analysis of Trusted Systems DoD Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria NSA Security Recommendation Guides Archives November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 GeoURL

February 09, 2007

Apple...you're a bunch of FUD monkies. You know dick about Vista security!