In the last three articles in my series on stored passwords, I mainly discussed Windows-related passwords. Today, I will focus on saved Internet Explorer passwords.

The two types of saved Internet Explorer passwords

I already mentioned in my post about the Windows Vault that some saved Internet Explorer passwords can be managed with the Credential Manager. These are HTTP authentication passwords, that is, passwords that are used to authenticate against a Web server (Internet Information Server, Apache, etc.). Passwords that are used to log on to a Web site with an HTML form (through a content management system) are not stored in the Windows Vault.

You can make out the difference between these two authentication forms easily. HTTP authentication always prompts a separate dialog window in Internet Explorer where you have to enter the credentials. HTML authentication is usually integrated within the Web page. This also makes clear why these passwords are not stored in the Window Vault.

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Submitted by Edward Lansink – Blog: GFI Tech blog GFI WebMonitor Freeware is a freeware web filtering and web security solution for ISA Server, ideal for SMBs. It lets administrators monitor what websites users are currently browsing and what files are being downloaded in real-time. Through user and site bandwidth monitoring features, the administrator has the ability to track download and upload traffic and the number of URL hits over time.

GFI WebMonitor Freeware

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Last week, I discussed some popular myths about the built-in Administrator account. Today, I will talk about a related myth. This myth isn’t spread by secret revealers, Microsoft’s marketing is the origin of this rumor. It is about this big change that UAC (User Account Control) supposedly brought to the Windows world. Security expert have always criticized that in Windows end users usually are logged on as administrators. This is very different to the UNIX world where even system administrators log on as root only every now and then. It appears that in Windows Vista everything is different because the default user type is now the standard user.

Darren Canavor, a Microsoft program manager wrote almost three years ago about Vista:

In Windows Vista we made numerous changes to our user account model. Standard users are now the default user type for new accounts created after initial setup.

Is this really true? I seriously doubt that.

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Some days ago, I stumbled across an article over at MS Windows Vista Compatible Software that explains how to enable or disable the Windows 7 built-in Administrator account. At first I thought that Microsoft must have changed something in Windows 7 with regard to the local administrator account. However, after reading the article, it became clear that everything is as is in Vista.

But, this is not the topic of this post. It is about the “word of caution” at the beginning of the article. Sekhy, the author of the article, warns his readers not to “tamper around” with the Administrator account. Ever since Microsoft decided to disable the built-in Administrator account in Windows Vista, there is a myth about the magical powers of the “true administrator account” circulating on the net. Hence, those people who don’t really know about these true powers should not dare to use the supersecret administrator account.

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When I started reading my RSS feeds this morning, one of the first headings that caught my attention was this one: “Microsoft lies about Vista being the most secure Windows ever”. Since it is from a Vista blog that usually has good stuff, I clicked into it. After reading about the meaningless data that is supposed to support the claim of the heading, I just thought, okay, good job, you lured me to click on this. Very funny, really! Then I moved ahead and was quite surprised how many news sites took the same bait. So my second thought was that I am missing something here.

So what is behind all this? The source of this new Vista bashing campaign is Simon Clausen, CEO of PC Tools, a security vendor. This is how InformationWeek cites him:

Ironically, the new operating system has been hailed by Microsoft as the most secure version of Windows to date. However, recent research conducted with statistics from over 1.4 million computers within the ThreatFire community has shown that Windows Vista is more susceptible to malware than the eight year old Windows 2000 operating system, and only 37% more secure than Windows XP.

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I have been asked to write an article about the Windows Vista vs. XP issue for the German magazine Computerwoche. They translated an InfoWorld article by Randall C. Kennedy which is one of the best Vista bashing articles I’ve read so far. After reading it, I was attracted by the challenge to defend the Vista pro stance. I agree with some of Kennedy’s views, but quite a few of his claims distort the real picture, in my view.

His article addresses eight fields: Security, Manageability, Reliability, Usability, Performance, Hardware compatibility, Microsoft software compatibility, Third-party software compatibility, Developer tools support, and Future-proofing. Today, I will only cover the security aspect. In future posts I will blog about the other fields. Not all of them deserve a single post though.

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Submitted by Jeff Botts

(The website is in German but has a translation link at the top.)

This is a great tool allowing users with standard rights to run programs with local admin privileges. It is based on SuDown and integrated in the Windows shell. Just right click on the icon of the program you want to run as admin and the context menu will give you the option to “Start as Administrator”. The current stable version doesn’t support global groups, so it won’t work on computers in a Windows domain. There is a beta that the developer put out on 02/24/2008 that is very stable and it works with global groups, too.

See about the new features of the latest release in the comments below.

SuRun

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Larry Dignan from ZDNet compared the vulnerabilities of Mac OS X with Windows XP and Windows Vista in 2007. The results are devastating for Apple. According to Dignan, Mac OS X had five times more vulnerabilities than Windows (XP+Vista). It is even more surprising that OS X had 234 highly critical vulnerabilities whereas Windows had only 23. So, does this mean that Windows is five times as secure as Mac OS X? I’d say no.

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Microsoft has a new blog: hackers at microsoft. No, these hackers are not trying to hack into Google to steal the latest search engine technologies. They are good hackers, the white hat hackers.

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An InformationWeek article discusses a new study that provides information on what IT managers think about Vista’s improved security. Only half of the 300 respondents are impressed by Vista’s new security features, it seems. Even more interesting is that only 14% “are eager to use UAC”.

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Last week, when I reported about this new Symantec study comparing different operating systems with respect to the vulnerabilities detected in the second half of 2006, I wondered when will the first study come out that includes Vista. I just stumbled across 90 days Vista vulnerability report of Jeff Jones, Microsoft security strategy director. There is an interesting debate going on now in the blogosphere.

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Update: I am working on a new series about the Vista x86 vs. Vista x64 issue. The first one covers the speed issue. The other article in this series will follow soon. You might also be interested in my post about the 3GB barrier. The discussion there is interesting. But now go ahead and read this one first.

Sometime ago, I published an article about a performance comparison between 64-bit and 32-bit editions of Windows. This post got quite a few hits, recently. Meanwhile, it has rank 8 of all posts here on 4sysops (see right sidebar). Obviously, many seem to be undecided which Vista edition they would like to use. In this post, I summarized the pros and cons of Vista x64 and Vista x86.

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Sometime ago there was a debate on 4sysops about the use of outbound filtering for personal firewalls. Some argued that once malware got started on the desktop, it is already too late to stop it with a personal firewall. I recently tested the outbound filter of Vista’s firewall. In my view, it makes sense for standard users to use it, but not, probably, for administrators.

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Paul Thurrott wrote an excellent article about Vista’s new security features. After reading it, you might get the impression that Vista’s improved security is reason enough to get rid of your XP machines as soon as possible.

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Preston Gralla reported that during the Black Hat security conference hackers managed to crack into Windows Vista. He acknowledged that any new OS is more prone to security leaks. The longer an OS has been made available, then the more of its security holes are found which are then patched.

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