{"id":22293,"date":"2008-05-16T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-16T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2008\/05\/16\/if-users-can-shut-down-the-machine-its-not-a-security-hole-if-they-can-shut-down-the-machine\/"},"modified":"2008-05-16T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-16T10:00:00","slug":"if-users-can-shut-down-the-machine-its-not-a-security-hole-if-they-can-shut-down-the-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20080516-00\/?p=22293","title":{"rendered":"If users can shut down the machine, it&#039;s not a security hole if they can shut down the machine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One great way to come up with a dubious security vulnerability is to take something completely innocuous and wrap it inside layer upon layer of obfuscation, and then you proclaim that the obfuscation is the vulnerability. Here&#8217;s an example based on an actual dubious vulnerability report:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"q\"><p>  <b>Title<\/b>: Native NT application can shut down computer <\/p>\n<p> <b>Description<\/b>: I have written this native NT application which bypasses the Win32 layer and talks directly to the low-level native NT functions. By calling various native NT functions, I can cause a dialog box to appear which includes a Shut Down button that shuts down the computer if the user clicks on it. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p> Well, sure, you can go through all that to shut down the computer. Or you can save yourself all the hassle and just call <code>ExitWindowsEx<\/code>. You see, that dialog box you found includes a &#8220;Shut Down&#8221; button only if the user that ran it has permission to shut down the computer in the first place.\n It is not a security vulnerability that users with permission to shut down the computer can shut down the computer.<\/p>\n<p> This is another example of people getting excited  that they were able to do something unusual. But just because you can do something unusual doesn&#8217;t mean that you&#8217;ve found a security vulnerability. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One great way to come up with a dubious security vulnerability is to take something completely innocuous and wrap it inside layer upon layer of obfuscation, and then you proclaim that the obfuscation is the vulnerability. Here&#8217;s an example based on an actual dubious vulnerability report: Title: Native NT application can shut down computer Description: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-22293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>One great way to come up with a dubious security vulnerability is to take something completely innocuous and wrap it inside layer upon layer of obfuscation, and then you proclaim that the obfuscation is the vulnerability. Here&#8217;s an example based on an actual dubious vulnerability report: Title: Native NT application can shut down computer Description: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}