Windows 7 security feature knocked by experts
Thursday, October 22, 2009
With the arrival today of Microsoft's much-hyped new operating system Windows 7 on retail shelves and online stores, security experts said the OS contains a carry-over from Vista in the form of User Account Control (UAC) that could pose security risks.
UAC's default setting in Windows 7 alerts users with a pop-up when a change is being made to the OS by third-party applications, an improvement over the feature in Vista, which issued pop-up warnings for any change to the system, which impacted usability.
But security experts have warned that the UAC default settings could be exploited by malware that is designed to turn off UAC, while security researchers have seen malware that attempts to spoof UAC notifications to get users to elevate privileges, CNET News reported.
Security researcher Ray Dickenson explained on the SafeCentral Blog that changes to UAC in Windows 7 make it easier for a Trojan malware that infiltrates the PC to turn off the UAC notification.
Researchers said the greatest malware threat remains cyber attacks from the web - through compromised websites that leave users open to "browse-and-get owned" drive-by attacks and Trojans hidden in executable files. Anti-virus filters can't always recognize those attacks.
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