[cap-talk] VMWare + Firefox to protect windows machines?

[Karp, Alan H]

Ian G wrote:
> 
> Caps people will recognise this one more quickly...  One
> thing I wasn't clear on is whether the same technique can
> be applied to IE?
> 
Yes, it will work for IE, but is it usable?  How do you save a page to a
file?  How do you mail a link or a page?  How do you view an html file
on your disk or in an email?  How do you overlap your browser window
with other windows on your desktop?  The answer to each of these
questions is that you can't.   

Their approach protects you from almost all attacks, even those that
subvert the OS, but that doesn't matter if nobody uses it.  You can get
nearly the same protection, minus safety from attacks against the OS, by
using the Windows runAs command to run the browser in a restricted user
account.  You'll be able to overlap windows, but the other stuff will
still be awkward.  If you want usability and the same protection as
runAs, use Polaris.

________________________
Alan Karp
Principal Scientist
Virus Safe Computing Initiative
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
1501 Page Mill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304
(650) 857-3967, fax (650) 857-7029
https://ecardfile.com/id/Alan_Karp
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alan_Karp
  
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