[tex-live] vista UAC testing

[David Kastrup]

Siep Kroonenberg <siepo at cybercomm.nl> writes:

> Earlier, I mailed that under Vista I couldn't run an unsigned
> executable without administrator privileges.
>
> Now I figured out that was because the executable was an installer.
> Vista somehow identified the program as such and concluded that it
> needed administrator privileges, which was not the case. For NSIS
> installers you can now add a `manifest' specifying whether
> administrator privileges are required, optional or irrelevant.
>
> The latest MinGW also has manifest support, but I haven't tested this.
>
> I also could run the Perl widget demo from my mingw-compiled Perl as
> a regular user. Apparently, Vista assumed that it didn't require
> administrator privileges. Hopefully, the same will be true for a
> Perl/Tk installer.
>
> I had to click through Vista UAC warnings before running these
> programs, because they lacked a digital signature. Microsoft has
> free command-line tools to attach a digital signature to existing
> executables, given a standard non-Microsoft certificate. I tested
> the code signing procedure with a test certificate which I had
> generated with other free Microsoft command-line tools.

Sounds like the classical "imply security by annoyance" approach also
used by most airlines nowadays.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum