Restricting access to hardware for which a driver is installed on a computer

摘要

Users of a computer are prevented from directly accessing certain hardware for which a driver is installed on the computer. The users are provided a limited, indirect manner to access the hardware for a specific purpose or to do a specific job. One example of such hardware is a wireless hardware communication interface. The wireless activity of the computer may be restricted so that the wireless hardware communication interface is prevented from communicating with any devices compatible with the wireless hardware communication interface other than one or more specific devices.

主权项

1. A method for restricting wireless activity by user accounts in a computer having a wireless hardware communication interface, the method comprising:
running a system-account process designed to communicate via the wireless hardware communication interface solely with a particular group of one or more wireless devices, the system-account process configured to receive inter-process commands from any user-account process; applying an access control list (ACL) that is configured to permit only administrative accounts and system accounts to have direct access to a software element installed on the computer, thus preventing any user-account process from directly accessing the software element, where access to the software element is essential to support communication via the wireless hardware communication interface; and running a user-account process that sends commands via inter-process communication to the system-account process, wherein providing the user-account process with indirect access to the software element to support communications via the wireless hardware communication interface solely with the particular group of one or more wireless devices occurs responsive to the running a system-account process, the applying an access control list, and the running a user-account process.