How To: Use Vista's UAC Feature To Avoid Always Requiring Admin Rights

Posted By: jmazner | Jun 29th, 2006 @ 1:50 PM | 57,343 Views | 11 Comments

Windows Vista's UAC feature is designed to minimize security risks by running most applications under a standard user token, lessening the risk that an attacker could gain admin rights to the machine.  This is a great step forward for users, but it may leave developers wondering what to do when their apps do really need admin rights to complete a task.

Ian Griffiths to the rescue, with another screencast showing how to structure an app to enable certain admin tasks to run in an elevated context.

Be sure to also check out the UAC team's blog.
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#Aug 30th, 2007 @ 1:16 AM
Jesp
Jesp
Hi jamazner,

   Can I have your sample code for reference ?
 
Jesper Lin
#May 15th, 2008 @ 9:33 AM
IanG
IanG
IanG
"I'm wondering how you made that recording? The video has footage of the UAC desktop -- isn't that meant to be secure and inaccessible to normal applications like screen grabbers -- did you point a camera at your monitor,"

A bit late to be replying, but better late than never I suppose...

The video capture was done by a 2nd PC with a video capture card whose input was wired into the VGA output of my laptop.

So it was slightly higher tech than pointing a camera at the laptop, but it sort of has the same effect: it lets you grab exactly what's on screen, without falling foul of internal security barriers in the machine.


Ian Griffiths
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