New MS Patent May Put Linux Security At Risk

Author: Donald Sears
minute read

Microsoft has been granted a patent on a privilige escalation system which appears to cover the functionality of PolicyKit, which is used for fine grain authorisation on Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE and other Linux systems.

Microsoft has been granted a patent on a privilige escalation system which appears to cover the functionality of PolicyKit, which is used for fine grain authorisation on Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE and other Linux systems. The patent claims in 7,617,530
appear to be for system software which, when an application needs a
higher privilege level, displays a graphical list of users with the
privileges required to perform the task. Read the full article. [The H Security]

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