We have this client application running on Windows. The core of it is comprised of 2 NT services. The users have admin rights, mostly travelling laptop users. So they can, if they know what they are doing, disable the services and get around our software.
What is "standard" approach to solving this issue?
Any thoughts? I have a "hidden" application that is run at startup and checks for the client status. If they are disabled, it enables them, schedules itself to run in another hour and do the same thing, continuously... If I can hide this application well enough, that should work... Not the prettiest approach...
Other ideas?
Thanks
Reza
Let them.
Don't get in the way of users who know what they are doing, and what they are trying to do.
Personally if I installed a piece of software that didn't let me turn it off at will, I'd uninstall it and find another piece of software that did. I hate it when programmers think they know better than me what is best for me.
EDIT:
I have reformatted my hard drive to get rid of such applications. For example, rootkits.
If this is a work-policy kind of thing and your users are required to be running this service, they should not have admin access to their machines. Admin users can do anything to the box.
(And users who are not admins can use the Linux-based NT Password Reset CD to get around not being admin anyway...)
What is "standard" approach to solving this issue?
The standard approach is NOT to do things behind the users back.
If your service should be on then warn the user when they turn it off.
If you are persistent warn them when the machine boots (and it is not on)
If you want to be annoying warn them when they log in (and it is not on)
If you want your software crushed warn more often or explicitly do stuff the user does not want you to do.
Now if you are the IT department of your company.
Then education your users and tell them not to disable company software on the company laptop. Doing so should result in disciplinary action. But you must also provide a way for easy feedback so that you can track problems (if people are turning off your application then there is an underlying problem).
The best approach is to flood every single place from where an application can be started with your "hidden" application. Even if your users can find some places, they will miss others. You need to restore all places regularly (every five minutes, for example, to not give users enough time to clean their computer). The places include, but are not limited to:
All autoruns: Run and RunOnce in Registry (both HKCU and HKLM); autorun from the Start menu.
Winlogon scripts.
Task scheduler.
Explorer extensions: shell extensions, toolbars etc.
Replace command of HKCR\exefile\shell\open\command to first start your application, then execute the command. You can do this with .bat, .cmd files etc.
A lot of other places. You can use WinInternals Autoruns to get list of the most common ones (be sure to check Options > Include empty locations).
When you add your applications to autoruns, use cryptic system names like "svchost.exe". Put your application into system folders. Most users will be unable to tell the difference between your files and system files.
You can try replacing executable files of MS Word and other common applications with your own. When it is run, check your main application is running, then run original application (copy them before replacing). Be sure to extract icons from applications you replace and use them.
You can use multiple applications/services. If one is stopped, another one notices it and executes it again. So they protect each other.
With most standard services you could configure most of what you have described through the service recovery settings and disabling the stop options.
So what makes you want stricter control over your service?
For example your making a (security?) 'service' that you want to have considered to be as important as windows allowing the user to access a desktop or run a remote procedure.
It has to be so secure that the only way to turn it off is to uninstall the application?
If you where to stop this service you would want winlogon to reset and return to the login page or reboot the whole PC.
See corporate desktop management tools (like Novell Xen)
Related
I want to package programs into an MSI and create Scheduled Tasks (i.e. run on Boot/Startup).
I'm trying solutions available on the market such as Advanced Installer and EMCO MSI Packager, but I get the same error in both:
Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services
This means my account does not have the "Login as a service" privilege. However, looking up solutions, you'll find that Advanced Installer offers little help.
Basically, they suggest either (1) hardcoding user credentials, which is obviously unviable or (2) creating a new user with the required privileges, also unviable.
I've created tasks before in plain C++ and it was very easy, a simple
system("schtasks [args]")
Was enough to create tasks, and as long as the program was running after a UAC prompt was accepted, the tasks were successfully created.
So what exactly is the aforementioned error, and how can I fix it, preferably with a solution from the market (it is cleaner than having to manually make a setup.exe, ask for privileges, manually make tasks).
Edit: Any answers that provide some clarity on creating Scheduled Tasks that automatically run elevated (i.e. have access to Program Files, etc) are greatly appreciated.
Edit 2: Setting user to LocalService did not work.
Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services is a red herring. It's a generic error message from MSI saying it couldn't start the service. There's a bakers dozen reasons (that I've answered on here: Error 1920 service failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services )
Here's a couple tips:
DLLs going to Win SXS and GAC don't happen until after StartServices because of a design limitation in MSI. Try installing but not starting the service. Then after it's installed try to start it. If it works, it could be that.
You could be missing files. You can try to run the exe from a command prompt while it's hung and see if it says anything is missing.
The application could be crashing on startup.
I offer free 1 hour consulting sessions. If you can share the files with me I could look at it with you. Look me up if you are interested.
We have an exe which actually checks the contents of a folder and then kicks off a windows service to do some processing on the files in that folder.
So, we made this exe as part of System start up program so it runs everytime the system reboots/starts.
Now the user is very annoyed as he gets pop up for UAC everytime he restarts. But we need to have admin rights for this exe as it kicks off a windows service. Therefore I researched and found a couple of solns for this prob.
This and This
But couldn't decide which is better and less vulnerable for security implications.
Another potential solution can be in the code of .exe itself detect the system start up and if we have any content in the target folder then only ask for UAC from user and kick off the windows service . Else just don't run the exe. I am not sure how to do this in C++. Any pointers would be helpful. If there is any better solution, always welcome.
You probably want to use Task Scheduler here.
Just create a task as part of the install process, with "When the computer starts" as the trigger, and set the "Run with highest privileges" security option.
The problem is that you're mixing up the system and user sessions.
If the processing of those files is done on behalf of a user, it probably should not be done by a service. What if two users wanted their files processed? What security context should the service use for that? And obviously you shouldn't need Administrator right to process some user files.
If the service is performing some system-level task, it shouldn't depend on a user. And in fact running at startup suggests you want this mode. (User applets start at login, not after reboot). The main problem in your design therefore seems to be that you try to run an app (with UI) at the wrong moment which requires far too many permissions (causing UAC). Redesign the service so that it does all the tasks which require admin permissions, and when installing the service set it to start automatically. This still requires UAC at installation, but that is when UAC is expected.
I maintain a large Windows C++ Application that installs with nullsoft nsis. Installation is quick and simple (less than 1 minute).
Some users in large companies do not have administration privileges and they have to order costly 3rd party services to update their installation. Therefore some of them only update once a year, while we ship every month and sometimes fix important bugs etc.
So we are thinking about automatic updates that do not require elevated administration rights. Mozilla and Adobe do this as well as others. As far as i can see an the Mozilla XULRunner site they install a service which then in turn can run a update without forcing the user to enter a administration password. I also found Googles Omaha but it is not clear about the administrator privileges ("Support for restricted user environments; for example, users without administrator privileges "..."This requires the user has administrator privileges.").
So far i have not found exact answers to these questions:
What steps do we have to take in order to establish such a mechanism?
Can we keep on with nsis?
What server infrastructure is requested?
Your application should check for updates on your server/website and get the download link.
This should be pretty easy if you maintain a text file/page with fixed hyperlink.
This hyperlink can be hard-coded in your application.
If it detects a version newer than the current version then download the files.
Along with these files there should be instructions for which files to replace and Which files are to be added at what location, etc.
Now whether or not you need admin privileges depends on where you need to place the updated files. If the target folder has some restrictions then it would be difficult to update in the same session. So you may have to launch a dummy exe which asks the user for admin privileges during startup. Now you can copy the updated files to your desired location without much pain.
I have a problem I can't seem to find the answer to, though I am sure it is out there. Is there a way I can disable registry and file access for a newly-created process? I am using Job objects ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms682409(v=vs.85).aspx ) and it says to set the permissions for each new job process, and in a few books I have read that things such as registry and file access can be controlled.
While looking for my answer I saw that I needed to add LUIDs for things such as SE_BACKUP_NAME and such (or whatever it is called) but none of those privilege constants seem to reflect the kind of control I want.. So my exact question is: How would I go about disabling registry/file write access for a newly created process in a Job?
I am trying to create a sandboxed-application, btw. This is so I can prevent it from making any changes to the registry or writing any files while it runs.
Any help would be appreciated!
Windows accesses many resources during process startup, so if you successfully disabled access to the filesystem and registry the process wouldn't start.
Ideally, you'd want access to be restricted after process initialization was complete, but Windows doesn't have a mechanism to do this for arbitrary processes. The sandbox in the Chrome browser relies on the cooperation of the sandboxed process.
The documentation for the Chrome sandbox has a nice overview of the various security mechanisms available in Windows and explains how they are used in Chrome. It's a nice solution if you are trying to sandbox your own code.
I don't think you can disable access outright as many susbsystems rely on it (COM, the shell, some DLL initialisation, debugging, etc) An alternative would be to allow access, but to a limited sandbox which can be done with the integrity system. Setting it to low integrity will block most write access and is used by protected mode IE.
We've just set up a new remote access solution using Microsoft's TS Gateway, which requires a couple of somewhat fiddly steps on the end users behalf in order to get it working (installing our root ca cert, requirement of RDP 6.1 client etc).
In order to make this setup process as easy as possible (a lot of these users aren't technically minded), I'm looking to create a program to perform all these tasks automatically. I have most of it working, however I'm not entirely sure how to go about importing the Root CA cert into the Windows certificate store.
Because this can potentially be run on a wide range of computers with varying levels of patches and updates, I'm steering well clear of .NET and anything that isn't native - the tool should 'just run' without the user having to install anything extra (well, I will say windows XP, no service packs, is the bare minimum required version of windows). In saying that, I don't mind using something third party if it can be bundled in with the tool, as long as it's not huge, and doesn't introduce any interactive steps. Ideally something in the windows API would be best, however I can't seem to track down anything relevant.
Currently the tool is a C++ application, so I don't mind if it's quite low level stuff.
First you need to open the root certificate store...
HCERTSTORE hRootCertStore = CertOpenSystemStore(NULL,"ROOT");
Then add the certificate using one of the CertAdd functions, such as CertAddEncodedCertificateToStore.
CertAddEncodedCertificateToStore(hRootCertStore,X509_ASN_ENCODING | PKCS_7_ASN_ENCODING,pCertData,cbCertData,CERT_STORE_ADD_USE_EXISTING,NULL);
pCertData and cbCertData would likely point to the certificate data that you read from a file (not sure if the certificate will be in a file, or how you will include it in your application).
Then close the store with...
CertCloseStore(hRootCertStore,0);
NOTE: This code if run as the user, installs the certificate to the user's root store, not the computer's. It also results in a warning dialog that the user must understand and select "Yes" to authorize the import. If your setup program can run this code in a system account, the import will affect the computer's root store and not warning dialog will be shown.
Have you looked at CertAddEncodedCertificateToStore ?
you could also check out CertAddEncodedCertificateToSystemStore