wineboot: Start items in StartUp folder on boot, includes security measures.

[James Hawkins]

On 2/12/07, richardvoigt at gmail.com <richardvoigt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You advocated that wine aim for working exactly like Windows, no less
> and no more, rather than deviating in user-configurable ways to
> enhance the user's control over his own system.
>

Right.  That's the purpose of Wine.  You'd know that if you were a
developer on this project.

> Maybe while we're at
> it, wine should have the bug which allows certain software to prevent
> screen grabs.
>

I don't know of any apps that depend on this behavior, so that's not
likely to happen.

> No, I think defeating DRM to enable fair use is
> perfectly reasonable, and there are some bugs which should be fixed.
> Should wine try to patch remote exploits at the exact same rate as
> windowsupdate.com?
>

Since we have completely different code bases, I don't see how we can
fix their code in our tree.

> That would be also be required for true
> bug-for-bug compatibility.  After all, someone properly authorized
> might be using that backdoor to reboot their webfarm remotely -- not!
>
> There are things that are wrong in a theoretical sense (i.e. the
> Pentium floating-point bug), or misclassification of Unicode
> characters, which some programs might reasonably depend on.  And then
> there are things that are wrong from a practical engineering
> perspective, like software taking away the user's choice to not run
> it, which the mere fact that a program depends on it makes it malware.
>

Are you a software engineer?  From a practical engineering
perspective, adding this option adds unnecessary complication to the
code base and increases the chances for bugs.  This is exactly what
UAC does, and no competent engineer thinks UAC is a good thing, or
that it adds any amount of security.  This "malware" that you're so
afraid of can just write over that registry entry.

> > Asking if you want to run every file set for startup in wineboot
> > every single time is crippling behavior, not to mention annoying.  UAC
> > anyone?  If you're so worried about this "malware", create a reduced
> > privileges account just for Wine.
>
> That's the point of a "remember my choice" or "Yes/No/Always/Never"
> option on the prompt which appears when the winecfg option is ask...
>

If this entry defaults to "Always" or "Never", then the users won't
even know that the option exists, and that's one more piece of
information that we'll have to broadcast and answer questions about.

> Reduced privileges do little or nothing to prevent network abuse (open
> spam relay and the like).
>

If you're running executables that are going to add themselves to
AutoStart, the fact that they might run again is the least of your
concerns.

-- 
James Hawkins