Sacrificing security for usability: UAC security flaw in Windows 7 beta

This is dedicated to every ignorant “tech journalist” who cried wolf about UAC in Windows Vista. A change to User Account Control (UAC) in Windows 7 (beta) to make it “less annoying” inadvertently clears the path for a simple but ingenius override that renders UAC disabled without user interaction. For the security conscious, a workaround is also provided at the end. First and foremost, I want to clear up two things.

First, I was originally going to blackmail Microsoft for a large ransom for the details of this flaw, but in these uncertain economic times, their ransom fund has probably been cut back so I’m just going to share this for free.

Secondly, the reason I’m blogging about this flaw is not because of its security implications - it is blatantly simple to fix - but Microsoft’s apparent ignorance towards the matter on their official Windows 7 beta feedback channel by noting the issue as “by design” and hinting it won’t be fixed in the retail version. A security-minded ‘whistleblower’ came forth to ask me if I could publicize this issue to maybe persuade them to change their mind. And that’s what I’m doing.