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RE: ?
By dgingeri on 2/2/2009 11:24:02 AM , Rating: 5

I've been working in IT for 13 years (Well, it will be 13 years in a couple weeks) and nearly every place I've worked that used anything from Windows NT to Windows XP, the users were generally set up as admins.

Believe me, if I could do it any other way, I would. Unfortunately, we have to run our remote users as admins so they can install local printers, (HP is too stupid to write printer drivers that can install with only power user membership) our helpdesk (for users of our products, not internally, and by far our biggest infection rate of trojans) must run as admins so that they can run the ticketing software and the phone center software, and our development department must run their own domain, that we can't lock down, so that they can test their newly developed software on their test servers.

If I could lock down users, I definitely would. The problem is that programmers don't seem to want to put in the time to make a program that can be run without being local admins. There are also far too many programmers out there who think they can change system files with impunity, which has always been the biggest source of instability in the Windows OS. I actually had one programmer in my last company contact me and ask me to deploy out a single file update (mfc42.dll) to the entire company so he could make his new program work right. (That dufus actually believed I wouldn't protest it!)

As soon as we get some smart programmers in the world, then we'll be able to get rid of things like this.

Oh, right, programmers are human. We aren't going to be able to get rid of the lazy, stupid ones.

RE: ?
By dgingeri on 2/2/2009 11:27:58 AM , Rating: 2
Oh, I forgot to mention. the stupid programmers of our help desk ticketing system actually require the users have admin rights to the SQL server in order to run the software! Can you imagine the idiocy??

And our help desk management at the time actually went with this garbage system and paid $2000 per license, and $5000 per management license for this POS software. I'm glad that manager is gone. I just wish the systems admin that approved this move wasn't my boss now.

RE: ?
By DrKlahn on 2/2/2009 1:21:39 PM , Rating: 2
None of our users run as administrators. I do agree that programmers need to be beat over the head with the need for their programs to function as a user. However we have been able through the use of utilities like Process Monitor from SysInternals to open up only the files and keys needed for the various programs to function. Some programs only require their initial launch as an administrator to setup the necessary files. As a result viruses and malware that get downloaded very rarely do any actual damage (I can't think of one incident in the last 6 months).

Remote sites are taken care of by remote control applications which allow the IT staff to install software and manage them. However painful the connection speed, it is a small price when compared with the labor needed to actually diagnose and repair an infected system. Laptops that absolutely have to have the ability to install devices on the road log in locally and then into AD when returning. The AD account of course does not have admin rights.

The users complained at first but looking at the statistics it is irrefutable that this has been a huge benefit. It takes a lot of testing and effort to get programs to function as a user, but it is well worth the investment. It's a shame that more programmers don't take this issue to heart as this single biggest reason Windows has the security issues it does.

RE: ?
By gstrickler on 2/2/2009 4:20:47 PM , Rating: 2
The way to encourage programmers to write software that doesn't require admin rights is to make your programmers run with the same privileges you expect users to have (e.g "power users" or "users").

Yes, developers may need to be able to install software on their machines. For that I give them a second login that gives them local admin rights (but very limited network access, so they can't normally run under that account to do their job). Be sure you're logging changes to permissions, group memberships, etc. If they use the local admin account to upgrade their domain user permissions (e.g. to a local administrator), they can be terminated.

Then, have a QA person or network tech try to install and run any updates from the developers while logged in as a "typical" user in your environment. If it doesn't install or doesn't work, send it back and work with the developers to come up with a solution that doesn't compromise your security.

I'm a developer, and a network admin, and network designer, and security consultant. I've had great success getting management backing to implement the above policies at my clients, regardless of company size. Generally, the most challenging users are executives/owners who are moderately technical, they often want to run as admin for convenience. Most of the time, I can convince them to be a power user (and possibly give them a separate local admin account with restricted network access).

There are challenges:
Some third party software requires operating as a local administrator. In this case, we typically set up a shortcut to run that application using "run as" using an account with local administrator privileges. With W2k/XP, there is a third party tool named TQCrunas that you can use to setup a shortcut where the shortcut is a script with an encrypted password so the user doesn't even need to know the account name or password for that local admin account.

TQCrunas can also be used to allow remote users to install their own print drivers and/or printers.

Programs that attempt to update themselves:
You can push updates via WSUS, and/or the Windows login script, and or from a script on the server, and/or use run as/tqcrunas for the installer/updater, and/or allow write permissions on that specific program directory (but not a Windows system directory), and/or install an updater service on the workstation.

I've encountered very few situations that actually require the user to run as an administrator. It's not hard to set up, but it does require some research, planning, and testing.

RE: ?
By bodar on 2/2/2009 6:22:21 PM , Rating: 2
We use a similar program from FullArmor called Intellipolicy, that is configured with AD Group Policy to promote apps to admin for any user. They discontinued the program though, because this can be done natively in Vista.


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