Goal:
It sounds a little bit odd, but I have to prevent that a software starts with administrative rights.
Problem:
I have a setup tool that installs the software very well. After completion the setup starts the software itself. Because the setup tool runs with administrative rights, the software that will be startet automatically after the setup does the same.
But all Settings that the program need, won't be written/read correctly that time, because due to the UAC virtualization, the config directory is different to the config directory the user would have without administrative rights.
Question:
Is there any way to downgrade from admnistrative rights to user rights, if the parent process owns administrative rights. App.config? StartParameter? or something else
Info: I'm using the INNOSETUP to build the setup tool.
Thx for your help
Just set runasoriginaluser flag for running application.
Yes, you can start a process non-elevated, however I'm not sure how this integrates with InnoSetup. The instructions are How do I start a program as the desktop user from an elevated app.
Consider marking your application with appropriate manifest to suppress UAC virtualization, it will then use the same directories in both cases: non-elevated and elevated. And better use directories in user's profile without relying on virtualization.
Related
I have created a win32 application in Visual Studio 2010. the application is sort of installer, it copies an exe to system32 folder.
The exe which is copied by installer is executed every time the windows is restarted. i have created an entry for it in the registry, now the problem i am having is i want to run that exe as administrator every time it is executed.
I can change the properties of the exe to run as administrator, but it works only for the specific system, i have mentioned my application is an installer, so it is quite hectic to change the privileges at every system.
Kindly guide me how can i solve this problem
First of all, please note that privileges and rights are specified for users rather than executables.
In order to have an executable run elevated, you typically need to add an application manifest to your executable that specifies the requireAdministrator execution level. Such an application will fail to run if the user is not an administrator, or cannot find an administrator to perform over-the-shoulder elevation.
Now, this probably won't help you much. If you want elevation to happen at logon (assuming your registry setting is HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run) then this will lead to the user being presented with a UAC elevation dialog every time the program starts. I cannot imagine that behaviour is desirable.
Perhaps the cleanest way to avoid all of this would be to convert your application to run as a service. Services run in session 0 and are not subject to UAC. Simply run the service under a user account that has sufficient rights.
One final point, that I cannot stress enough. You should not be copying files to system32. That is the system folder and it belongs to the system.
Firstly I want to emphasize that I'm not trying to do anything "nasty" or "hackerish", nor am I trying to hide anything from user here.
During installations (using InstallShield LE) of my application user is prompted by Windows UAC to allow it to run in Administrator mode; If user accepts it - installation continues (standard behavior) and user again can check the option to add this program to autorun list (by adding a registry key to HKLM/../Run). All is fine and normal. But after every Windows restart, when this application starts, UAC kicks in and asks for user permission. Question is, how to avoid it, since it's a bit annoying (yet my app needs Administrator privileges to run)?
I mean user already granted such permissions on installation, so I cannot see a reason why it needs to be prompted on every startup? Moreover, I believe most antivirus software and such, also require elevated permissions to operate, but UAC doesn't prompt for it at Windows Startup.
Thank you for any advises, information, comments or solutions.
Does your application really need to start elevated? Or will it need to elevated access later when the user uses it to perform an action? If you can, drop the later admin task into a separate exe, allowing the main exe to start with no elevation - when you shellexecute the worker process later it will UAC on demand.
At install time, as you have noted, you have elevated the installer. If you want to run elevated code on subsequent runs, automatically, this is the point to install a service - which is what all those other apps you mentioned do.
You can't get around UAC for a process started in an interactive session. You could use a service running as a privileged user but you would be far better off finding a way to do whatever you do without requiring admin rights.
It's not possible for a program to run elevated without prompting. What you want to do is factor those portions of your application that need elevation into a windows service that runs as system. Then your autostarting application can make remoting calls to the service to delgate those activities that the user can't do without elevating.
Not done it but I found this article Selectively disable UAC for your trusted Vista applications that says use 'Application Compatibility Toolkit' from microsoft.
The Compatibility Administrator allows you to create a database of
compatibility fixes that will allow you to run certain applications
without an accompanying UAC.
Run the Compatibility Administrator as admin
select a new database template
Click the Fix button on the toolbar. When you see the Create New Application Fix wizard ... enter details about your app
Select a Compatibility Level
Select RunAsInvoker as the fix
It seems that the last one
Selecting the RunAsInvoker option will allow the application to launch
without requiring the UAC prompt.
Should do what you want provided that the invoker is admin and I think you can do this at start up using the scheduler : Create Administrator Mode Shortcuts Without UAC Prompts in Windows 7 or Vista
As you can see it runs your app in the compatibility mode which may or may not be acceptable for you.
I have a console application written in c#, which downloads a file to program files. So of course it needs to run as admin. This program gets called from a Win32 C++ application which almost certainly is not running as administrator
What are my options. How can I get this to work on UAC and non UAC enabled boxes ( I don't know if there needs to be separate solution in each case )
Oh and the console app is in .NET 2.0
On a machine with UAC you need to include a manifest resource to specify that you want the process to run as administrator.
On a machine without UAC you will simply have to instruct your users that they need to run it as a user in the administrators group. Almost all users of XP (the version that you will most commonly encounter without UAC) are in the administrators group so you won't encounter many problems.
I never tried it, but this can probably be done using the
CreateProcessAsUser Function.
To get Windows users to log on as regular users instead of admin, I need to check that all their applications run OK with limited rights.
Is there an application specifically aimed at checking that an application can run with limited rights, or is SysInternals' Process Monitor what everyone uses for this purpose?
Thank you.
Create a test account that has the permissions as the domain users of your application Login in as this user on a non-development computer. Preferrably a computer with a new operating system installation and all of the other "standard" company software. Install the software and run. This is the only way to really test your application.
Make sure you exercise the entire application.
Make sure install and uninstall work as expected and do not leave any artifacts behind.
Having the ability to restore the operating-system and software on the test computer to its original state is a great help.
Use the Permission Calculator Tool to make sure you handle obvious issues before performing this test.
I'm not sure if it would help since I never used it but I know there's a Permission Calculator Tool (Permcalc.exe) at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165077%28VS.80%29.aspx.
Permission Calculator Tool
(Permcalc.exe)
The Minimum Grant Set Determination
tool (Permcalc.exe) is used to
estimate the permissions callers must
be granted to access the public entry
points of an assembly. This tool is
new in the .NET Framework version 2.0.
It is intended for use by advanced
users.
Run this application on Windows 7/Vista with access control enabled. You may consider Windows 7 as such testing application :)
It is recommended to use non-administrator account with activated access control on a developer computer, when you write and debug the program. This creates some problems, and Windows developers hate this, turning off access control or using administrator account. However, working on Linux/Unix, we don't have administrator rights, and this is OK.
I have an app that normal users need to be able to run, but requires administrator privileges to actually function.
I tried to make the shortcut that my users run it with "Run as administrator" but this just causes a UAC prompt whenever they try to run the app.
Is there any way to elevate privileges programatically, without my users needing to go through a UAC prompt and/or knowing an administrator password? From a security standpoint, I understand that most applications shouldn't be allowed to do this, so I'm hoping there is some way to do it if I can provide a valid username/password pair, or something.
The app is written in C#, so a fully managed solution would be preferred, but p/Invoke Black Magic (or even writing an MC++ Wrapper Which We Do Not Speak About) would be more acceptable than disabling UAC entirely.
Generally this problem solved by installing a Windows Service which runs as SYSTEM or an admin account. Then your application can request the privileged action from this service.
Obviously to not pose a security threat ensure that your service can't run arbitrary code or something which might leave the all users vulnerable to privilege escalation attacks.
Winpcap and most of the other sniffing applications use a similar design to give sniffing access to unprivileged users.
Actually, why don't you just create a Task Schedule which runs the app with elevated privileges? As long as you setup the Task under elevation, it will not prompts you for a UAC when it is auto-run during reboot or whatever your trigger is.
Just make sure you set level=requireElevation in your manifest file, and task scheduler will run your app with admin rights without prompting your user for admin rights, as this had already been established when you setup the task with admin privileges.
It's not possible. You cannot decide to suppress UAC prompt.
You have to ask yourself:
What would happen on Windows XP?
The user is a standard user on Windows XP, and the application "needs" to run as an administrator. Are you:
going to refuse to run?
going to crash on startup?
going to show the user access denied error messages?
If the user is simply not allowed to run the application as a standard user on Windows XP, then UAC is your friend: it tells the user that they have to be an administrator.
And it even offers to let them (temporarily) gain administrative privileges.
But you have to ask yourself:
What would happen on Windows Vista?
In order to elevate, the user will need someone from IT to walk from three buildings over, so they can type in their credentials "over the shoulder". Perhaps you can make the user's life easier. Let 99.9% of the application run, and split off that 0.01% to an "administrative" module.