Wednesday, February 27, 2008 by Kaushik Security , Software , Windows

The problem with Windows XP is it runs all programs with an elevated user privileged. The first user account that Windows XP creates after a fresh install is automatically given administrator status. All applications that are run inside an administrator account runs with admin privileged, which means that they are allowed to make changes to the registry and system files, creating, deleting and modifying files at will. If a virus or spyware happens to get into such a computer, the virus gets admin status too bringing destruction to the usually inaccessible system files. One way to prevent this is to create a separate limited account for day to day use. This limited account has lower privileged and is not allowed to bring changes to system files and registry. If a virus manage to get into such an account, it wouldn't be able to do much damage. But the limited account is in fact, very limited. It doesn't allow to make many customization to your computer and most importantly it doesn't allow software installation. This makes it almost useless for daily use.

A Microsoft employee named Michael Howard has created an application to address this issue. He has created a program called SetSAFER using which you can force a program to run with lower privileged thereby minimizing the chances of the program doing any damage to your system.

Download SetSAFER from the author's website. Now open Notepad and copy paste the following into it and save with the name setsafer.xml


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<safer>
<app comment="Internet Explorer"
path="C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer"
user="true" />
<app comment="Microsoft Office 2003"
path="C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11"
user="true" />
<app comment="MSN Messenger"
path="C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger\msnmsgr.exe"
user="true" />
</safer>


You can add as many programs as like to this file, that you wish to run with lower privileges. The "app comment" defines the name of the program as it would appear in the program window and the "path" points to the location of the application. You will require .NET Framework 2.0 to run this tool. After the XML file is set, copy it to the same folder as SetSAFER and run the program.

http://www.instantfundas.com/2008/02/how-to-run-applications-as-non-admin-in.html