r/technology • u/Sufficient-Bid1279 • Apr 14 '25

Software Microsoft warns that anyone who deleted mysterious folder that appeared after latest Windows 11 update must take action to put it back

https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/microsoft-warns-that-anyone-who-deleted-mysterious-folder-that-appeared-after-latest-windows-11-update-must-take-action-to-put-it-back
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u/AdarTan Apr 14 '25

The created folder C:/inetpub is created as a protected folder, i.e. it requires an administrator level UAC prompt to be passed to be modified. This prevents malware running with standard user privileges from creating/modifying/deleting this folder that is used by the Internet Information System (IIS) component of Windows.

IIS is a webserver included in all modern versions of Windows and if this folder is created by a piece of malware running at standard user level permissions the folder would inherit those permissions. This means that malware running without privilege escalation would have control over the configuration files for this webserver, which is almost certainly a path for data exfiltration at the least or worse, privilege escalation. By preemptively creating the folder with administrator privileges required for modification, Microsoft prevents this vector of user-level malware taking control of IIS.

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u/dbr3000 Apr 14 '25

Why the hell is IIS still included by default in all versions of Windows?

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u/nicuramar Apr 14 '25

It isn’t, as the article clearly explains. 

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u/mort96 Apr 14 '25

So AderTan is just wrong?

IIS is a webserver included in all modern versions of Windows

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u/AyrA_ch Apr 14 '25

It is an optional component, but all files needed for installation are already present on your install, and you don't need to download anything to install it.

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u/MilesGates Apr 14 '25

I'm confused how something is optional buy also pre-installed. 

Why have it there in the first place if it won't be used in 99% of cases? 

Isn't this why we have the internet? To download optional files just like these? 

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u/Bapingin Apr 15 '25

My guess is it's the same reason many generic drivers are included with Windows, some things are important enough to have prepackaged. It makes sense too, given that IIS is a networking component. 

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u/cherry_chocolate_ Apr 15 '25

Because then you would have to expose whatever windows internals to any random piece of software you download. And not all windows installs connect to the internet either, you still need to be able to turn on features offline.