LG software disables Windows security feature, developer says

LG Split Screen software that comes with the company’s ultra wide monitors stealthily weakens Windows users’ defenses by deactivating the OS’ User Account Control (UAC) feature, developer Christopher Bachner claims.

Introduced with Windows Vista and present in later versions of the popular OS, UAC’s goal is to improve user security by limiting application software to standard user privileges until an administrator authorizes an elevation in privileges.

Bachner made the discovery a week after he began using the monitor, when he first noticed that his Notepad++ session is in Administrator mode without him explicitly launching it as an Administrator.

“Another indicator that something was wrong is that each time I used the ‘Run’ application, it would start CMD with an Admin,” he shared in a blog post.

So he checked whether UAC was on, and discovered it was disabled. Believing that this change was made by the recently installed split screen software, he tested the theory by firing up a Windows 10 VM and installing the software on it.

He found out that his theory was correct. “Instead of writing software properly, they just disable UAC upon installation in order to make their software work,” he says.

The change can be reverted by removing the software and enabling UAC again manually, but the question is how many users – especially those who are not tech-savvy – will notice this furtive change?

When contacted about the matter, a LG employee said that Bachner’s claim is false.

Bachner responded by publishing a video that proves his finding:

The ball is now in LG’s court.

Software developers are used to balancing between security and usability, but what they definitely shouldn’t be doing is improving the usability on their software by switching off security software or features made by other manufacturers.