[Gllug] MS grumbles

Nix nix at esperi.org.uk
Fri Nov 6 13:24:58 UTC 2009


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.
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