Re: Opening and locking physical drives

I think access to floppies are governed by "Allow format removeable media"
security policy.

"David J. Craig" <Dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23d72eoLYGHA.3740@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
If you were to think about the difference between floppies and other media
the different requirements would make sense. Other media forms do not
require real physical format just to use them and you wouldn't want to
force an administrator to come to the machine so a user could format a new
floppy. Formatting a floppy can do a real format and not just a logical
format. It does appear that the docs are misleading in that it says a
normal user cannot open a floppy drive or volume. Have you tested on disk
volumes or physical fixed disk drives? You can try WinHex since it does
both types.

"ijor" <ijor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:C2627D41-C05B-4B7E-B1E5-7058E18D33CF@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Maxim S. Shatskih" wrote:

CreateFile docs claim that for opening a physical disk or volume
administrator privileges are required. This seems to be wrong, at
least it is
definitely wrong for floppies under XP and Win 2K.

But this is true for fixed disks. It's obvious - if non-admins will be
able to
read the disk blockwise, then what is the purpose in NTFS file ACLs? :-)

Any app which wants to lock the fixed disk, or to read it blockwise can
only
run as admin. This is normal, since the task is administrative by its
essense.

Even pursuing the goal of running such things as limited user is evil,
since it
defeats the NT's filesystem security.

Of course, but the CreateFile documentation doesn't make any distinction
between fixed disk and floppies, or between secured and unsecured file
systems for that matter. You could have an unsecured FAT partition on a
hard
disk, and opening the volume as ready only should not present a security
compromise.

Anyway, I am specifically interested in floppies. I'm not trying to
nitpick
about minor documentation errors, just want to know about the extent of
the
doc error. Can floppies always be opened and locked without admin
privileges?
It depends on the exact OS? It's actually up to the floppy driver and
then it
might be different with USB floppies?






.

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