Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

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Privileges

Author:	Paul Snively
Posted:	5/5/2000; 8:35:24 AM
Topic:	Virus from Manila
Msg #:	16966 (In response to 16951)
Prev/Next:	16965 / 16967

Levy: This is very simple, really. When you open an attachment, the VB code in it runs with full privileges on your computer.

This is indeed a crucial point in software security. I wonder what happens on, e.g. NT workstations where the current user has an extremely restrictive set of permissions, e.g. they can only write to their "My Documents" folder?

A HUGE chunk of the problem does indeed seem to stem from active content (be in mail, web, whatever) running with the set of privileges granted to the machine's current user, as opposed to the set of permissions granted to the author of the content.

This is the sort of thing that the <http://www.erights.org> people talk about a lot (and are doing something about).

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