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[Bug-XBoard] Security concern


From: John Summerfield
Subject: [Bug-XBoard] Security concern
Date: Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:26:01 +0800
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 (Windows/20090605)

I administer, amongst other things, computers running Windows XP.

A key point in computer security is that users do not have administrative rights. Related to this is that administrative accounts are used only for computer administration.

A typical administrative task is installing software such as winboard.

A typical user "task" is using software such as winboard.

On a well-managed computer, a user cannot install software such as winboard, and an administrator does not use it.

This leads to a problem with software such as winboard: winboard stores user-related data in its installation directory. This means that, on a well-managed computer, all the different users have but one set of options.

On Linux and Unix, programs store users' preferences in a location in their home directory - in the case of xboard, ~/.xboard would be an appropriate location.

My observation, I've not seen relevant documentation, is that in Windows, the appropriate location would be
%HOMEDRIVE%\%HOMEPATH%\Application Data\Winboard

This allows individual users to save their preferences, impossible with the existing setup, and for different users of the same computer to have their own separate settings.

The obvious workaround, to run winboard as an administrator, has the bad side effect of reducing computer security.

Please, as a matter of urgency, create a new release addressing this problem.





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