[Gllug] MS grumbles

[Peter Childs]

2009/11/6 Nix <nix at esperi.org.uk>

> On 6 Nov 2009, John G. Walker told this:
> > Thanks for all those who posted the ctl-alt-del trick. Is this part of
> > Microsoft's "security through obscurity" philosophy: security is
> > obscured? I'm used to KDE's icon to lock my screen. I tend to think
> > this sort of thing is more "user-friendly",
>
> It's a secure attention key, a key which cannot be intercepted by
> applications, so you can be sure that the 'lock screen'/'change
> password' you get is actually Windows, not a piece of hostile malware,
> unless that malware has acquired local system privileges (which makes it
> all sort of useless given how many holes are routinely published
> allowing just such elevation). They picked ctrl-alt-del because it was
> *already* non-overrideable by applications, thus couldn't break
> anything. It always weirds out users the first time they see it though.
> --
> Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
> http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug
>

Under Windows NT certainly 4 and 3.51 as well if I remember correctly, you
had to press Ctrl-Alt-Del before you got a login prompt, This was a tad
disconcertaing when everyone was used to Ctrl-Alt-Del rebooting the
computer previously...

Peter.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/gllug/attachments/20091106/08101e0c/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug