"insecure-by-inattention" - by that I mean software that must run as super-user or otherwise (otherstupidly) it won't run at all. ReactOS is not only intended as a plug-in replacement for MS Windows, if I read this-and-that correctly, it's also intended to "get it done right". And so we can't have super-user as default user, because that is Microsoft's thorn-in-the-flesh, and they can have it. I don't want it.
What I've been thinking is there is quite a bit of useful information and knowledge being actively developed and used in the Unix/BSD/Linux field for handling that sort of problem. The BSD chroot jail is one such implementation - there are even some aspects of the MS Windows directory structure that would simplify the adaption of the chroot jail to the ReactOS.
[hardware]\Program Files\Abracadabra-Malware-Magnet\
"Abracadabra-Malware-Magnet" is a separate subdirectory within the Program Files directory. Chroot jail, if I remember correctly, requires a separate directory for each chrooted program so it sees itself as the one-and-only love of its kernel's uptime. The MS Windows directory structure already has this separable directory structure.
What needs to be done is to ensure that it thinks it's the only one around.
There would be some sizeable problems - ensuring that the dlls would be sufficiently robust to avoid being hijacked, is just one, ensuring that it couldn't make any changes to dlls outside its directory is a bigger one, but that could be handled by making sure it installed all its (uniquely) needed dlls in its chroot jail. Which a lot of Win32 programs do anyway.
What do people think?
Wesley Parish
"Sharpened hands are happy hands. "Brim the tinfall with mirthful bands" - A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge
"I me. Shape middled me. I would come out into hot!" I from the spicy that day was overcasked mockingly - it's a symbol of the other horizon. - emacs : meta x dissociated-press