Comparison of Windows Vista and Windows XP: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 06:38, 17 July 2016

Revision as of 17:41, 15 August 2016

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[[User Account Control]] in Windows Vista improves this by limiting [[application software]] to standard user privileges until an administrator authorizes an increase in privilege level. In this way, UAC prevents users from making inadvertent changes to system settings and locks down the computer to prevent unauthorized applications from installing or performing malicious actions. Windows Vista is able to work around many LUA bugs in third party applications with its file and Registry virtualisation feature, as well as application compatibility [[Shim (computing)|shims]]. [[Internet Explorer 7]]'s Protected Mode utilizes User Account Control to isolate IE from other applications and prevent it from writing content to any ___location, except the ''Temporary Internet Files'' folder. Internet Explorer 7 is available for XP, but does not support Protected Mode on XP. Windows Vista also includes [[Windows Defender]], a spyware scanning and removal tool that is also available for Windows XP for free. Enterprise and Ultimate [[Windows Vista editions|editions of Windows Vista]] include [[BitLocker Drive Encryption]], which aims to help protect data in the case of stolen devices.

Vista implements [[address space layout randomization]], that makes it considerably more difficult for malicious code to exploit [[Return-to-libc attack]]s than on previous versions of Windows, particularly on 64-bit systems. Furthermore, Vista implements heap management enhancements that make it much more difficult to carry out [[buffer overflow]] attacks.<ref>{{cite web|url=httphttps://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-06/BH-US-06-Marinescu.pdf|title=Windows Vista Heap Management Enhancements|author=Adrian Marinescu|publisher=[[Microsoft]]|date=2006-08-03|accessdate=2008-10-10}}</ref>

64-bit editions of Windows Vista require all kernel-mode drivers to be digitally signed, initially making it difficult for [[rootkit]]s to install until [[Alureon]] managed to overcome this obstacle in 2010 by subverting the [[master boot record]].

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The firewall in Vista has been rewritten, allowing both outbound as well as inbound traffic to be blocked.<ref>http://technet.microsoft.com/nl-nl/library/cc755158(WS.10).aspx</ref>