Is it possible to get a C++ application running in Windows to request administrator privileges from the operating system at run time?
I know it can be done at compile time, but can't seem to find anywhere whether it can be done at run time.
Thanks for your help!
EDIT: What if I want the current instance to have elevated privileges? For example, I might have data stored in memory which I want to keep.
If you want the application to always elevate, you can give it a manifest, either by building one in (not compiling technically) or by putting an external manifest in the same folder as the exe. If you want to decide, as a person, to run it elevated, you right click the exe or short cut and choose Run As Administrator. If you are launching it from code, then as #vcsjones comments, you use the runas verb when you launch that process. For example:
ShellExecute( NULL,
"runas",
"c:\\windows\\notepad.exe",
" c:\\temp\\report.txt",
NULL, // default dir
SW_SHOWNORMAL
);
You can elevate a process only during its creation. When a process already runs, there's no way to change its security token: it either runs elevated or not.
If your application needs to perform an administrative task, and it usually runs non-elevated, you have to create another .exe which will request elevation with its manifest. To start a process elevated, you have to use ShellExecute or ShellExecuteEx function. From your main process you will need a way to pass the commands to that new process that will run elevated.
For more information about UAC, read Designing UAC Applications for Windows Vista series.
Not quite, but you can do the opposite—you can drop privileges if you already have them. So, you can have your program start out running as an Administrator, using one of the methods listed by Kate Gregory. Then, drop your unneeded privileges; see Dropping privileges in C++ on Windows for how to do that.
Add a manifest file into your EXE as described here.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb756929.aspx
Your process (and threads) have a token assinged to them. That token already have all your groups set up. Under UAC, the Administrator group is disabled. UAC will remove that disabled group so you end up with a full administrator token.
To acheive the same, you must have the TCB priviledge. In other words, to elevate a process at runtime, you will need help from a process running under the SYSTEM account, and Microsoft isn't providing one, nor an API to control the current UAC implementation. Otherwise, it would defeat the purpose.
For the sake of completness, there is a whitelist of process that can perform some elevated operations without prompting. In short, your executable needs :
To be signed by Microsoft
To perform predefined operations, like with IFileOperation
The best explanation I found is this hack. It has been fixed since then, but is sheds some light on the whole thing.
Related
My program normally needs to be launched as an elevated process and therefore it contains the usual manifest (...<requestedExecutionLevel level="requireAdministrator"/>...), so the UAC will pop up when the program is launched. This work fine as intended.
Now under certain conditions I'd like to run that program (programmatically from another unelevated process) as an unelevated process (IOW it should act just as if the manifest would not contain level="requireAdministrator").
Is this possible?
For the sake of clarity, lets call the program you want to run X.
I normally use a 'shim' to launch X elevated. The shim is just a little program that is marked requireAdministrator and whose sole purpose is to run X elevated. X is then marked asInvoker and will run elevated (only) when invoked from the shim. You then make the shim the icon that the user clicks on.
Having done all that, you can then run X unelevated by launching it direct.
I hope that all makes sense! I don't know of any other way.
Raymond Chen covered this topic on his Old New Thing blog:
November 18th, 2013: How can I launch an unelevated process from my elevated process and vice versa?
Going from an unelevated process to an elevated process is easy. You can run a process with elevation by passing the runas verb to ShellExecute or ShellExecuteEx.
Going the other way is trickier. For one thing, it’s really hard to munge your token to remove the elevation nature properly. And for another thing, even if you could do it, it’s not the right thing to do, because the unelevated user may be different from the elevated user.
...
The solution here is to go back to Explorer and ask Explorer to launch the program for you. Since Explorer is running as the original unelevated user, the program (in this case, the Web browser) will run as Bob. This is also important in the case that the handler for the file you want to open runs as an in-process extension rather than as a separate process, for in that case, the attempt to unelevate would be pointless since no new process was created in the first place. (And if the handler for the file tries to communicate with an existing unelevated copy of itself, things may fail because of UIPI.)
April 25th, 2019: How can I launch an unelevated process from my elevated process, redux
There’s another way which is a bit more direct, but it assumes that the thing you want to do can be done with a direct CreateProcess call. In other words, if you need the system to look up the user’s file associations or default browser, then this technique is not for you.
The idea is to take advantage of PROCESS_CREATE_PROCESS access and the accompanying PROC_THREAD_ATTRIBUTE_PARENT_PROCESS process thread attribute:
...
Basically, this lets you tell the CreateProcess function, “Hey, like, um, pretend that other guy over there is creating the process.”
Both blog articles contain full source code examples.
Is it possible to get a C++ application running in Windows to request administrator privileges from the operating system at run time?
I know it can be done at compile time, but can't seem to find anywhere whether it can be done at run time.
Thanks for your help!
EDIT: What if I want the current instance to have elevated privileges? For example, I might have data stored in memory which I want to keep.
If you want the application to always elevate, you can give it a manifest, either by building one in (not compiling technically) or by putting an external manifest in the same folder as the exe. If you want to decide, as a person, to run it elevated, you right click the exe or short cut and choose Run As Administrator. If you are launching it from code, then as #vcsjones comments, you use the runas verb when you launch that process. For example:
ShellExecute( NULL,
"runas",
"c:\\windows\\notepad.exe",
" c:\\temp\\report.txt",
NULL, // default dir
SW_SHOWNORMAL
);
You can elevate a process only during its creation. When a process already runs, there's no way to change its security token: it either runs elevated or not.
If your application needs to perform an administrative task, and it usually runs non-elevated, you have to create another .exe which will request elevation with its manifest. To start a process elevated, you have to use ShellExecute or ShellExecuteEx function. From your main process you will need a way to pass the commands to that new process that will run elevated.
For more information about UAC, read Designing UAC Applications for Windows Vista series.
Not quite, but you can do the opposite—you can drop privileges if you already have them. So, you can have your program start out running as an Administrator, using one of the methods listed by Kate Gregory. Then, drop your unneeded privileges; see Dropping privileges in C++ on Windows for how to do that.
Add a manifest file into your EXE as described here.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb756929.aspx
Your process (and threads) have a token assinged to them. That token already have all your groups set up. Under UAC, the Administrator group is disabled. UAC will remove that disabled group so you end up with a full administrator token.
To acheive the same, you must have the TCB priviledge. In other words, to elevate a process at runtime, you will need help from a process running under the SYSTEM account, and Microsoft isn't providing one, nor an API to control the current UAC implementation. Otherwise, it would defeat the purpose.
For the sake of completness, there is a whitelist of process that can perform some elevated operations without prompting. In short, your executable needs :
To be signed by Microsoft
To perform predefined operations, like with IFileOperation
The best explanation I found is this hack. It has been fixed since then, but is sheds some light on the whole thing.
I have been dabbling with working nicely with UAC for a while and I found about a few things:
With UAC enabled, a program in the Startup folder, that requires to be run as admin (say by an embedded manifest), cannot be run according to this Stack Overflow thread.
Another method of running a program at startup is by creating a key containing the path to that application in: HKLM or HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run or HKLM or HKCU\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run in 64 bit machines.
Yet another method is using the task scheduler setting the Run with highest privileges option. This is the only method that bypasses the problem stated in point 1.
Coming from a Linux background, I had no clue about all these admin rights related problems. If someone can list out scenarios which absolutely need administrator privileges, it would be of great help!
I'm asking this because when I'm developing some application, I keep encountering several problems during implementation mostly because my application required admin rights when it shouldn't.
If I know, at design time, all possible scenarios that require admin rights, I could possibly design a common service for all my applications that takes care of all the administrator tasks (I think services are the Windows way of doing things like this).
There really isn't a list of scenarios or API function calls that require elevation. Your best option will probably be to focus on what API calls require elevation. The reason for this is that it may be required only if certain values are passed to the function. For instance CreateFile can create a file in your home directory without elevation but requires it for creating a file in C:\Windows. If the directory is provided through user input the only way you can know if elevation is required is to check the error code when the call fails. If elevation is required the function will set the error status to ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED and return a value indicating failure.
How do you set a program to ask for elevation upon execution? I've asked around here and there, but haven't gotten an answer. I'm not sure how I would do this, but the program that i want to write, needs permissions to be run.
Security models are rather platform-specific. Qt does not AFAIK address this sort of thing. (Case in point: the Qt Creator installer itself choked when I didn't run it as root.)
You'll presumably need to make native calls or interact with some daemon designed for the purpose. Often easiest to try whatever it is you think you should be able to do, and check for failure, and if you can't do what you want then ask the user to explicitly re-run with higher privileges.
Linux:
Best way elevate the privileges programmatically under different versions of Linux?
Windows:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163486.aspx
Mac:
Escalate App Privileges Programmatically OS X
(Note: Often if you have to ask a question about something like this, there may be a better way to do whatever it is you're trying to do. Consider posting a question that is more general about what you want, and you might get suggestions on a way to do it more cleanly.)
I don't think it is possible to ask to be elevated automatically.
The only way I can think of doing it would be to have a service running as a Local Administrator account and performing elevated run for you.
I have used this when installing/uninstalling MSI packages autmatically as part of a CI Build (Go Agent runs as Local System Account)
I was wondering if it is possible for a program to prompt the user with a UAC prompt to raise it's own privileges without starting another process.
All the examples I can find on the internet seem to ShellExecute "runas" which creates a new process with elevated privileges.
If this is not possible then my best solution I guess would be create a named pipe, ShellExecute my own program with a special argument, and then shove all the data that it will need to perform the operation down the pipe. If there are any better suggestions then this I would be glad to hear them.
Thanks for any input.
No, you can't elevate an existing process. You're right - you have start a new elevated process and get that to do the work for you.
One other possible answer (which ends up being essentially the same answer) is to have a service which runs as LocalSystem that does the elevated work for you.