[Hawxy]

> Security

There's a pretty interesting video from 2023 that goes through much of Microsoft's thoughts around Windows security. It flew under the radar unfortunately:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T6ClX-y2AE

[jpm_sd]

Do you have a TL;DW? It's an hour long video

[Hawxy]

- Windows 11 has provided a hardware security baseline for Microsoft, with features that require hardware support (HVCI, TPM etc) to be enabled by default going forward, stating that Windows 10 strategy of off-by-default was a failure.

- Admin accounts are a continued security problem within the Windows ecosystem, so a future version of Windows will be adding a new "Adminless" account model with linux-like just-in-time escalation. This new model intends to provide a secure middle-ground between the frustrations of a standard user account and the security risks of an Admin account. "Adminless" accounts will run as a "less privileged" user by default and prompt users with Windows Hello when an application requires escalation for a given operation, rather than permanently running the account as a standard or admin user.

- Win32 Applications will be bundled under the new Win32 App Isolation model, which provides the security benefits of UWP sandboxing & clean uninstalls without the API limitations of UWP. Developers will be able to specify what privileges an application requires, much like other application platforms. A demo was shown of Notepad++ running under this sandbox model with minimal modification.

-TPMs within the ecosystem are not in a healthy state, with telemetry telling Microsoft that many are running vulnerable firmware due to manufactures not pushing out updates, and some being inoperable due to hardware failures or other issues. Microsoft is working on its Pluton security chip to replace/augment the existing TPM ecosystem and have the ability to push out firmware updates via Windows Update.

- Software/Hardware mitigations are reaching the end of the road in terms of viability. Microsoft is now focused on eliminating classes of security bugs with extensive R&D going into the use of Memory-safe languages (Rust) in areas of the system that exploits often appear in.