Comparison of Windows Vista and Windows XP: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:59, 7 July 2017

Revision as of 16:59, 7 July 2017

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==Security==

Security was a top priority during [[Development of Windows Vista|Windows Vista development]]. In Windows XP, every user is set up as an [[Superuser#Windows NT|administrator]] by default (unless added through Computer Management). As a result, most home users ran all their software with Administrator access. However, this left most users unwittingly open to potential security threats, such as hacking and [[malware]] downloads. A large amount of existing software doesn’t run well as a standard user, due to developers not implementing the [[principle of least privilege]] in their design and testing. For example, many poorly written applications often assume incorrectly that they will have read and write access to the entire filesystem and system [[Windows Registry|Registry]].<ref>[http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=288259 UAC - What. How. Why.], Channel9</ref> Denying such an application access to any of these assumed rights can cause the application to fail. Sometimes, a person logged on as a standard user under Windows XP can't perform user-specific tasks such as changing the [[system clock]] and calendar, changing the computer's [[time zone]], or changing the computer's [[power management]] settings due to so-called "LUA bugs".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc160944.aspx|publisher=[[Microsoft]]|title=Problems of Privilege: Find and Fix LUA Bugs|date=August 2006|author=Aaron Margosis}}</ref>

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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=https://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>

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