Why Non Admin
When you run a program as Administrator, it has unlimited access to your computer. It can install root kits, back doors, keyloggers, adware, spyware, viruses, trojans, and all other manner of nasties, and they will have the same unlimited access. Think it won't happen to you? Aaron Margosis points out a plausible - and disastrous - scenario:
Let’s say you’re using your favorite search engine and click on a link that looks promising, but which turns out to be a malicious site hosting a zero-day exploit of a vulnerability in the browser you happen to be using, resulting in execution of arbitrary code.
But if you were running as a User, most exploits would immediately fail. User accounts have much fewer privileges than Administrators, greatly reducing your "attack surface".
To prove this, eWeek set up fully-patched systems running both Windows 2000 and Windows XP, logged into those systems using User and Administrator accounts, and then surfed some of the nether reaches of the net before doing malware scans. Here are the results (via adminfoo.net):
| |
Total |
Processes |
Files |
Registry |
| Windows 2000 SP4 |
| User |
1 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
| Administrator |
19 |
3 |
503 |
2,500 |
| Windows XP SP2 |
| User |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| Administrator |
16 |
20 |
400 |
2,774 |
More Details
From Aaron Margosis:
From Jenni Merrifield:
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