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Project Insomnia

Project Insomnia is many things, but in this context it is simply a "braindump" of whatever I happen to be thinking/reading/watching/doing at the moment. Parental guidance suggested.

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

What is a non privileged user? (and why should I care?)

Keith Brown answers this question in the online edition of his book, A .NET Developer's Guide to Windows Security. This chapter will make it very clear how important it is to develop code (and in fact operate day-to-day) as a non-admin user, and if you're anything like me (though you're probably not) draw you in to reading the rest of the book online.
It's obvious that individual programmers need to learn how security works on this platform. I believe that a great way to start is to run from day to day as a normal, non-privileged user. Why do I believe this? Because I did it myself. I stopped running as an administrator and I immediately began to spot problems in my own code, and in other products that I used to use on a daily basis. I was shocked to see how many programs failed miserably when run non privileged, but at the same time, I was learning how to avoid these same failures in my own code. I felt like I'd taken the red pill (apologies to The Matrix) and I was seeing the real world for the first time.
I found this article when Googling for information on how to run WinKey (an absolutely essential little utility) as a non-admin user. It's confirmed my own recent decision to do everyday work while in XP Pro as a non-admin user, and also to change Jennifer's XP Home account from the default administrator setting to a non-admin.
|| Andrew, 12:59 AM || ||

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