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Have a Win 7 box, SP1, with default UAC settings (just for the feeling). When I run something as Administrator, the UAC elevation prompt comes up, asking for an admin password. That's designed behaviour (I wouldn't call it normal, though).

What bothers me is that the "Ok" button is selected by default. So if some sneaky badware gets to run on my box I have a chance of accidentally hitting Enter and thus allowing it run in privileged mode. I would expect it to default to "Cancel" or even start with the focus on a passive object so that unexpected appearance of the elevation prompt will not cause an accidental allowance (or denial) of the elevation request.

What do you think about this? (Other than switching UAC off.) Is there any way of settings the default?

UPDATE: this is because I had no password set for the admin user. Now that I have set and administrator password, the Yes button is still default, but obviously, can't accidentally accept it, since the password is required.

Dercsár
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  • Just found this question somebody asking for the opposite: http://superuser.com/questions/353106/windows-7-how-to-set-default-choice-as-yes-in-uac. Weird. – Dercsár Feb 25 '13 at 21:52
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    I have been using Win 7 x64 for several years, I have installed hundreds of Win Vista and 7 workstations, and I have never seen "yes" button default focused, it's always "no". I definitely don't know how you reached that situation. Of course I agree with you that logical default is the safe behavior. – Áxel Costas Pena Feb 25 '13 at 21:59
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    "No" is what the default normally is, not sure what's up with your system. Also, the default setting is to enable Secure Desktop, which supposedly makes spoofing difficult. – Karan Feb 26 '13 at 00:12
  • No progress in that? AFAIK, UAC settings are stored in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System, but I don't know if there is some other per-user storage... Dercsár, could you check this registry path and see if there is any interesting key? – Áxel Costas Pena Mar 18 '13 at 16:16
  • Even if you did make "No" the default, as long as "Yes" has a keyboard hotkey (I think both Alt+Y and simply Y will activate it) there is potential for accidental activation. They really need a countermeasure to prevent a focus switch from receiving keystrokes until there's an intervening pause in typing, and this is applicable to much more than just UAC. – Ben Voigt Sep 09 '13 at 16:37

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