Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Windows 7: Letting device drivers be installed by a standard user - very bad idea

I just found that a standard user in Windows 7 can install device drivers. This is really a bad idea. Any malware or unfriendly software can install a bunch of device drivers which can screw your computer.

Somehow Google managed to install two video capture devices on my computer without my knowledge when I was working in a standard account. And I was able to uninstall these video capture devices from the standard account.

Can somebody install a key-logger device from a standard account?
If so, then that will be a real bummer.

Microsoft should implement this as a privilege - "device driver installation privilege" - which can be denied or given to any standard user or there should be a group called "Device Driver Operator" and only users who are member of this group can install device drivers.

I will like to set my standard account so that my standard account can't install any device driver or plugin. So far I haven't found a way to achieve this.

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