Five reasons to love--and hate--Windows Vista

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Still didn't answer the question

Also, you point out that the defenses seem to be in the client, and not the underlying OS.

Reread my post, I suggested nothing of the sort.

Does this mean that after UAP popping up and telling the user that the email they are about to read is asking for administrator privileges, the virus was able to spread?

They didn't mention how it was able to bypass Vista defences to gain access to the system. If it was only possible with user intervention then Vista has done its job.

Security, to some extent, must be at the client level since the OS has no idea if the "delete all files from My Documents" is a legitimate request or as the result of a compromised client. The best the OS can do is prevent a compromised client from escalating its privileges, something that Sophos certainly didn't show.

I'm also curious what browser they used to access their web mail client. If it was IE7 and this virus was able to spread through the user's files without any user intervention then this is a failure in IE7's sandbox. Again though, Sophos only says that this was able to bypass Vista's defences, they give no detail about how much user intervention was required. I suspect the total lack of detail is because revealing that detail would be quite embarassing for Sophos.

Finally, from the Sophos version of the article:
There has been much speculation about whether Vista would render existing malware extinct, and the news is now in - it won't

I would just like to ask who, exactly, has been predicting that Vista would render malware extinct? The best we can expect from the OS is that it gives the user a method of intervening. It isn't a failure in Vista if someone sends out an email attachment with the instructions: save this file to disk, run it, ignore the UAP warning, and enjoy the FREE DANCING ELVES animation. Did you actually look at the 3 viruses that Sophos is freaking out about? These all required user intervention even in XP! These are email attachments that people have to manually execute!

Posted by: NonZealot   Posted on: 12/01/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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