Installed ICC Printer Profile Not Available in Win 10/64

[Doug Gray]

Don't try and throw voodo-security at me. If their ICC parsing is code is either A) being executed in kernel mode or B) not written in a robust way, then they are doing something wrong, it's as simple as that, and the described change in installation behavior is not a way to address either issue.

As I said, it's a stretch. I also agree the installation behavior accomplishes little to nothing. However, such approaches by malware writers have been done and the incredible complexity of the code in systems these days makes it extremely difficult to protect against.

However, it's also a very unlikely attack vector because very few install ICC profiles and those that do are not attractive targets from either a financial pov (most malware) or intel gathering pov (state actors). So silently ignoring an install request is just knee jerk "security" implemented in a way that is annoying and confusing.  A lot of that going around these days.

[JRSmit]

Werd problem. I use windows 10 since januari.  Create a lot of profiles on another computwr before transferring these to my production computer. NeveR experienced this issue.

[Mark D Segal]

So silently ignoring an install request ...............

Perhaps the case for Windows, but on OSX one does get a warning and there is an option for the user to over-ride and allow the install. Maybe it achieves nothing of technical importance, but as I mentioned above, that's probably not what it's for - it's possibly there for the optics of positioning responsibility onto the user. Otherwise why bother if it's not a good technical approach, which they would know.

[Doug Gray]

Werd problem. I use windows 10 since januari.  Create a lot of profiles on another computwr before transferring these to my production computer. NeveR experienced this issue.

I also have never seen this happen and that includes downloading profiles from the web as well as installing profiles created on other computers. And that's with Win 10 x64. Could be some configuration. Windows is security is highly configurable for IT to control corporate environments.

[rasworth]

I've run into it a few times, when extracting data off of a hard drive from a dead system.  It's fairly easy to reproduce.

I went to a "foreign" system (one of several Win 10 pcs in my house), and downloaded BetaRGB.icc from Bruce Lindbloom's website.  I then formatted a USB drive on this same pc, selecting NTFS as the file system.  The USB drive after formatting shows Everyone as the only user in the security properties screen.  I copied the BetaRGB.icc file onto the USB drive.  This is consistent with what one runs into extracting data from a foreign hard drive, except there may be other users listed in the properties.

I moved the USB drive to another Win 10 pc and copied the profile to my desktop.  A right click on the file brings up the context menu, including Install Profile, and I invoked same.  I checked the security properties of the profile in c:/windows/system32/spool/drivers/color, and all appeared ok, except that it was "branded" as a file from an unknown system, with a msg that it might be blocked, and with a convenient check box to unblock it.

The moral of this story is choose FAT32 for your file system on a USB drive used for file transfer.  I won't comment on the appropriateness of Window's actions, but they are consistent.

Richard Southworth

Added by edit - I was not blocked from using the profile in Photoshop even though I had not checked "Unblock", maybe a difference between PS and LR?

[GWGill]

I moved the USB drive to another Win 10 pc and copied the profile to my desktop.  A right click on the file brings up the context menu, including Install Profile, and I invoked same.  I checked the security properties of the profile in c:/windows/system32/spool/drivers/color, and all appeared ok, except that it was "branded" as a file from an unknown system, with a msg that it might be blocked, and with a convenient check box to unblock it.

Sounds like the problem is not something specific to ICC profiles, but just a permissions problem. Maybe Win10 changed the default permissions for some sorts of file creation, and therefore such files are not readable when copied from NTFS to systems without a corresponding user account.

[rasworth]

In my experience as long as the files from another Windows system aren't encrypted/password protected, then one can always take ownership and read the data.  However they are flagged as "foreign", and hence the message on the security properties screen.  It would then be up to an application, or possibly the OS, to decide to reject/hide the files.  As the OP discovered, they can be unblocked.

Richard Southworth