Understanding Windows 7's 'GodMode'

cnet.com ^ | January 4, 2010 | Ina Fried

[Berlin_Freeper]

Although its name suggests perhaps even grander capabilities, Windows enthusiasts are excited over the discovery of a hidden "GodMode" feature that lets users access all of the operating system's control panels from within a single folder.

By creating a new folder in Windows 7 and renaming it with a certain text string at the end, users are able to have a single place to do everything from changing the look of the mouse pointer to making a new hard-drive partition.

[JerseyHighlander]

bump.
cool post. almost equivalent to win server 08 r2 now.

[Hodar]

I've asked Microsoft for more details on the feature and how it came to be. But so far, Redmond is silent on the topic.

Looks some programmer made a huge backdoor; and didn't document his work. Now, is this an exploit that anyone can use - or is already in use? As a rule, "undocumented features" are never a good thing.

[Abby4116]

It works in Vista too.

[AFreeBird]

It works mostly in vista. At least from what I’ve read. There are some aspects that are win7 only although I could not name them for you.

And I don’t think this is a proverbial “backdoor” as some have suggested. Merely an undocumented function of the developers to give them a one stop shop for making adjustments to the system without the need to Wade through all the nested menus.

[tacticalogic]

Looks some programmer made a huge backdoor; and didn't document his work. Now, is this an exploit that anyone can use - or is already in use? As a rule, "undocumented features" are never a good thing.

It's just a collection of the various control and configuration programs into one folder. There's nothing in there that wasn't there before, it's just been collected into one folder for you.

[piytar]

Could someone post the God-mode window name? Had it up for a second before cnet crashed my blackberry...

[Kitsunebi]

Handy but certainly not anything special. :)

Windows 7 GodMode? Not really
Note: The link above opens a new window.

Cheers!
Kitsunebi

[Yo-Yo]

Hopefully this will be Blackberry friendly:

The trick is also said to work in Windows Vista, although some are warning that although it works fine in 32-bit versions of Vista, it can cause 64-bit versions of that operating system to crash.

To enter "GodMode," one need only create a new folder and then rename the folder to the following:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Once that is done, the folder's icon will change to resemble a control panel and will contain dozens of control options. I'm not sure it's my idea of playing God, but it is a handy way to get to all kinds of controls.

Obviously, with a string extension such as that, the feature was hardly "undocumented." Nobody started randomly naming folders and stumbled upon this feature.

[Hodar]

It's just a collection of the various control and configuration programs into one folder.

Yes, and it's UNDOCUMENTED. So, let's say that I'm a malicious virus writer. I write a trojan that creates this folder, and then a script that uses controls in this folder to open ports, open access to your machine - and then do something really nasty. Say, perhaps hook your machine into a coordinated attack against the Pentagon.

Because this is undocumented, and a 'Godmode' sort of thing, it's completely conceivable that you can shut down every security precaution that Windows has - and completely remove your data, and write 1's over your data; load nasty things from an off-shore website, and steal your identity, use your machine as a Zombie - there is no limit.

All because of this 'Undocumented Feature'. There are limits on the OS, for very good reasons. This allegedly bypasses those limitations, and there is nothing that indicates what you CANNOT do. This is bad - if you can do it; so can a script written by someone you do not know.

[piytar]

Thanks!

[throwback]

Maybe they picked “7” because it's the last version, and there's about to be another “G_dmode”. And on the 7th version, Bill Gates rested.

[aft_lizard]

I think you are overstating things here. There was nothing before that under your extreme scenario that couldn’t be done by a hacker. The same file extension would need to be entered, the same protocols would need to be followed all this does is provide a compiled list for the end user of all the functions available in a single folder.

[SkyDancer]

Yep, I did it on my laptop. Real cool feature. Everything in one place ... I run Vista Premium.

[ShadowAce]

[tacticalogic]

One more time.

There's nothing there that wasn't already on the system before that folder was created.

"GodMode" is just a name the person who came up with it gave it. "NerdMode" would probably be more accurate.

There's nothing particularly God-like about it. It doesn't enable a hacker to do anything they couldn't do before. Everything in that folder already existed on the system before the GodMode folder was created. If a hacker wrote a program to utilize something in that folder, he'd reference it from the normal default installation location rather than try and get it from a folder that might or might not be there.

[JoeProBono]

[raybbr]

It looks like a compilation of links to the actions available in Control Panel. Kind of nifty.

[tacticalogic]

It looks like a compilation of links to the actions available in Control Panel. Kind of nifty.

That's pretty much it. It's just a collection of shortcuts to stuff that was already there, but not partucularly well organized.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Looks some programmer made a huge backdoor; and didn't document his work.

It'll probably get disabled with the next Auto Update. =;^)