191–200 of 223 posts
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windows users will also happily "run as administrator", while a lot of linux users know not to do that in my experience
>a lot of linux users know not to do that in my experience README.md : "to get this to work, curl or wget the following script and run it as sudo" Linux users: Aye
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I had always assumed that one application could not touch the memory of another application. Does running as Admin allow breaking this boundary?
This is wrong, on Windows there are system calls to access memory of other process and on Linux you can do it using debugging. Also on Windows there is a tradition to inject libraries into other processes, create threads in processes etc.
Whether this provides any meaningful security is questionable unless you pair it with filesystem isolation to prevent malicious programs from modifying config files / bashrc / etc. Meanwhile it does make legit uses of ptrace more annoying.
[0] https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/security/Yama.txt
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I had always assumed that one application could not touch the memory of another application. Does running as Admin allow breaking this boundary?
Yes, in general on Windows processes with higher privilege levels can get access to read/write another processes memory, or even inject code into them. And even Admin-level processes can still be broken into by something running as a service with even more elevated privileges like NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM. This has long been a leaky part of Windows security. If your malware can get its code running inside a highly privile…
TL;DR: Windows Defender had a bug that made certain system calls expensive on CPU cycles when Defender's Real-time Protection feature is enabled. After discovery, Mozilla reported this issue to Microsoft. Microsoft is releasing a patch that should result in lower CPU usage when using Firefox on sites like YouTube (a ~75% CPU usage reduction was noted when browsing YouTube in Firefox with the fixed version of Defender…
The biggest surprise for me was Microsoft actually fixing it.
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In my experience (as a former Firefox dev), antivirus / antimalware software are really poorly behaved. They tend to: - require admin rights (which means that if they have vulnerabilities, it can take control of the entire machine, even if Firefox itself is sanboxed); - monkey-patch the Firefox executable in memory, which works (when it does) as long as the version of the software tracks closely the version of Firefo…
> - install encryption certificates that are actually less trustworthy than Mozilla's, hence decreasing the security of https; Given that in many industries insurances and, in some cases like banking, the law requires companies to monitor HTTPS traffic of browsers for compliance, it might be better if browsers had a dedicated filter / monitor API.
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>a lot of linux users know not to do that in my experience README.md : "to get this to work, curl or wget the following script and run it as sudo" Linux users: Aye
That is programmers etc using Linux, yes. Casual users wont touch the terminal.
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Next: Canadian cars and their daytime running lights.
Running lights during daytime seems to reduce crashes by about 5-10%, and crashes consume a lot of energy. Depending on crash severity there's at a minimum the wasted time for all involved parties and frequently the necessity for repairs (including the production of replacement parts, paint etc), and at the high end the involvement of emergency personnel and their vehicles, hospital beds, doctors, the production of e…
> a ~75% CPU usage reduction was noted when browsing YouTube in Firefox I wonder how many of the people who say "Firefox is significantly slower than chrome" are using windows... On my computer, Firefox IS slower than chrome but (with ad blockers enabled) by an insignificant amount. By still being "the last remaining mostly independent, maintained and reasonably popular browser" I'd prefer it to use over chrome even…
I just ran a test at https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.1/ Firefox scored 89.5 ±1.7 Chromium scored 87.3 ±2.9 I guess that means Firefox did faster for those tests. I don't use Chrome or Chromium based browsers in general so I don't know how they compare in "feel". I am on Linux.