OpenProcessToken() gives "Access is denied" - delphi

As part of a project which runs as a service that spawns a process in the login screen (for desktop control) we call OpenProcessToken(), which is then duplicated and a process created. This works successfully as expected under LocalSystem, however this does not work under a domain account. The code fragment is below...
procedure LaunchProcess;
var dwPid, dwSessionId: DWord;
hUserToken, hProcess: THANDLE;
begin
dwPid := GetProcessID('winlogon.exe', WTSGetActiveConsoleSessionId);
hProcess := OpenProcess(MAXIMUM_ALLOWED, FALSE, dwPid);
if (not OpenProcessToken(hProcess, TOKEN_ADJUST_PRIVILEGES or TOKEN_QUERY or TOKEN_DUPLICATE or
TOKEN_ASSIGN_PRIMARY or TOKEN_ADJUST_SESSIONID or TOKEN_READ or TOKEN_WRITE, hUserToken)) then
raise Exception.Create('OpenProcessToken failed (' + SysErrorMessage(GetLastError) + ').');
{...go on to duplicate token, create environment and launch process...}
end;
Full source of the surrounding supporting function can be found here.
This is where it gets a little vague. I understand OpenProcessToken() requires privileges, which is ultimately why I am getting the error, however it wasn't clear what privilege I require, and how to effectively assign that against a domain account.
This would suggest that the required privilege is SeTcbPrivilege ("Act as part of the operating system").
I've read the Microsoft page (can't link, not enough reputation - sorry) on privileges which suggests that the SeTcbPrivilege can be assigned to a domain account using Local or Group Security Policy. It has also been suggested that the destination process (i.e. winlogon.exe) may simply not allow anything other than LocalSystem to obtain its token.
I have tried to configure the domain account explicitly using account the service, but in the Local Security and Group Policy, have restarted and performed gporesult to ensure the policy has taken effect, but each time whoami /priv returns SeTcbPrivilege is disabled
My question is if this is even possible (can I obtain winlogon.exe token using a domain account) and if so can the privilege be set programmatically, or does this need to be through GPO? (and if so, given my previous attempts at using GPO had no effect, how is it possible)

You can Activate Rights using LsaAddAccountRights, you still need to at least log off/on possibly reboot.
You then need to enable the Privileges for those rights in your code. Lots of things happen automatically for Local-system that do not for Users.
For a quick test I Activated and Enabled SE_TCB_NAME, SE_ASSIGNPRIMARYTOKEN_NAME and SE_INCREASE_QUOTA_NAME
I was then able to successfully call OpenProcessToken with only TOKEN_DUPLICATE
Activating those right gave me a new SessionID after Log off/on. SessionID of 2 so your call to WTSGetActiveConsoleSessionId would have falsely returned 1
All this was done as elevated Admin

Does your application run successfully when you run it with administrator privileges? If so, go to your project options, select Application and check "Enable Administrator Privileges" under Manifest File.

Related

Windows service application self-defense in Delphi ( rad studio )

I am building a Windows service app using Delphi , RAD Studio 10
Upon my investigation I came across with a Eset Windows service which wonderfully was protecting itself from being Stopped or terminated.
On stopping the service using (windows service manager) or (end process button)
or (end task button) following error messages occurs :
The operation couldn't be completed.
access denied.
same thing is true with its registry keys . The error message is :
Can not delete info: Error while deleting key
I tested Administrator access and system access. in both cases i was not successful.
I want to build such self-defense mechanism for my own application protecting my service and registry key.
Any idea would be helpful.
Thank you for your time.
update :
I want to know how i can do it in Delphi ... that's why it is tagged Delphi
and If someone wants to stop the service or uninstall it ....
he or she can just use my own applications UI to do it.
edit 2 :
As Remko mentioned I thnk DACL and ACL is better way to handle it , I couldn't find any good reference for it. Is there any good reference for Delphi language?
Protecting from SCM stop is very easy. Assuming you are using TService, you can handle the TService.OnStop event and set its Stopped parameter to False. And assign an error code to the TService.ErrCode or TService.Win32ErrCode property.
Unless you are writing security software, you really should not protect from TaskManager termination. Admins should be allowed to kill misbehaving processes. That being said, you can use SetSecurityInfo() to assign a DACL to your service process that grants/denies access to particular users and/or groups as needed.
You can also use ChangeServiceConfig2() to configure your service's "failure actions" to restart the service if it terminates unexpectedly.
To protect your Registry key, you can use the lpSecurityAttributes parameter of RegCreateKeyEx(), or use the RegSetKeySecurity() function, to assign a SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR to your key that contains a DACL that grants/denies access to particular users and/or groups as needed.

Using CreateOleObject('Outlook.Application') causes "Server execution failed" error when run as administrator

It's a Delphi XE2 app. Pretty simple. Just calls CreateOleObject('Outlook.Application') and assigns the result to a Variant.
If the program is run as administrator it fails with "Server execution failed", but it works fine and I can get the version number back if I run as the logged in user (without elevated permissions).
Why is this? What is it about running as administrator that stops it from creating the object?
This error is due to a mismatch between the security contexts. Outlook is a singleton, so CreateOleObject will connect to the running instance of Outlook if it is available. COM system refuses to marshal calls between processes with different security contexts.
Either make sure Outlook is not running when calling CreateOleObject or make sure both processes run in the same security context.
You can also switch to Extended MAPI (which is a set of dlls loaded in-proc) used directly or through a wrapper (such as Redemption (I am its author) - its RDO family of objects roughly corresponds to the Namespace object in the Outlook Object Model.).

Network Service account does not accept local paths

I am creating a program that runs as a service and creates database backups (using pg_dump.exe) at certain points during the day. This program needs to be able to write the backup files to local drives AND mapped network drives.
At first, I was unable to write to network drives, but solved the problem by having the service log on as an administrator account. However, my boss wants the program to run without users having to key in a username and password for the account.
I tried to get around this by using the Network Service account (which does not need a password and always has the same name). Now my program will write to network drives, but not local drives! I tried using the regular C:\<directory name>\ path syntax as well as \\<computer name>\C$\<directory name>\ syntax and also \\<ip address>\C$\<directory name>\, none of which work.
Is there any way to get the Network Service account to access local drives?
Just give the account permission to access those files/directories, it should work. For accessing local files, you need to tweak ACLs on the files and directories. For accessing via network share, you have to make changes to file ACLs, as well as permissions on network share.
File ACLs can be modified in Exploler UI, or from command line, using standard icacls.exe. E.g. this command line will give directory and all files underneath Read, Write and Delete permissions for Network Service.
icacls c:\MyDirectory /T /grant "NT AUTHORITY\Network Service":(R,W,D)
File share permissions are easier to modify from UI, using fsmgmt.msc tool.
You will need to figure out what minimal set of permissions necessary to be applied. If you don't worry about security at all, you can give full permissions, but it is almost always an overkill, and opens you up more if for any reason the service is compromised.
I worked around this problem by creating a new user at install time which I add to the Administrators group. This allows the service to write to local and network drives, without ever needing password/username info during the setup.

Run Non-Visual GUI App from LocalSystem Service

Background
We need to run a GUI application from a Windows Service, set to Log On as Local System (and without enabling interact with desktop).
The GUI application takes one command-line parameter, performs a specific task and then self-terminates. It is a GUI app because some of its components require a parent TForm, so a console app doesn't work. There are no dialogs or any UI a user would see. In fact, it creates itself as a hidden form with no taskbar icon:
Application.Initialize;
Application.MainFormOnTaskbar := False; // <- No taskbar icon
Application.ShowMainForm := False; // <- Main form is hidden
Application.CreateForm(TForm1, Form1);
Application.Run;
It is possible that the GUI app may be launched multiple times simultaneously, each with its own command-line parameter. Since a GUI app can't be spawned directly in the Session 0 process of the service, I created an Administrator user account so the service can log on the admin user and run the GUI app as the admin user. Once I get it to work once, I will leave this user logged in so the service can quickly launch the GUI app without the login/logout overhead each time it spawns the GUI app.
What I've Done
I'm using the following code, formed from dozens of discussions on this topic, even though most of them wanted the GUI app to be seen by a logged on user.
function CreateEnvironmentBlock(var lpEnvironment: Pointer; hToken: THandle; bInherit: BOOL): BOOL; stdcall; external 'userenv.dll';
function DestroyEnvironmentBlock(lpEnvironment: Pointer): BOOL; stdcall; external 'userenv.dll';
var
_usertoken: THandle;
_si: _STARTUPINFOW;
_pi: _PROCESS_INFORMATION;
_env: Pointer;
_sid: Cardinal;
begin
if LogonUser(PChar(Username), PChar('localhost'), PChar(Password), LOGON32_LOGON_INTERACTIVE, LOGON32_PROVIDER_DEFAULT, _usertoken) then
try
ZeroMemory(#_si, SizeOf(_si));
_si.cb := SizeOf(_si);
// _si.lpDesktop := 'WinSta0\Default'; // <- behaves the same with or without this
if CreateEnvironmentBlock(_env, _usertoken, False) then
try
if CreateProcessAsUser(_usertoken, nil, PChar(sCMD), nil, nil, False, CREATE_UNICODE_ENVIRONMENT, _env, nil, _si, _pi) then
begin
WaitForSingleObject(_pi.hProcess, 30000);
CloseHandle(_pi.hThread);
CloseHandle(_pi.hProcess);
end
else
_handle_error('CreateProcessAsUser() failed.');
finally
DestroyEnvironmentBlock(_env);
end
else
_handle_error('CreateEnvironmentBlock() failed.');
finally
CloseHandle(_usertoken);
end
else
_handle_error('LogonUser() failed.');
end;
The Windows Event Viewer [Security Log] shows an entry when LogonUser() is called. The following privileges appear in the log entry:
SeTcbPrivilege
SeSecurityPrivilege
SeTakeOwnershipPrivilege
SeLoadDriverPrivilege
SeBackupPrivilege
SeRestorePrivilege
SeDebugPrivilege
SeSystemEnvironmentPrivilege
SeImpersonatePrivilege
sCmd is set to "c:\path\myapp.exe" "parameter". When sCmd was not properly set, CreateProcessAsUser() would fail with an error of 2 - The system cannot find the file specified. Once I fixed that, CreateProcessAsUser() returns True, but it never actually launches the GUI application.
Question
I'm not sure what I'm missing. I would appreciate any help with getting the service to launch the GUI app under the logged on Username/Password profile, if that's the right way to do this. Or, if there is a better way to do it, I would appreciate any direction and insight.
Thanks to David, Remy and Andy for comments. It helped me to step back and look at the issues from a fresh point-of-view. The solutions ended up being very simple.
Problem 1 - GUI Apps and "Session 0" Services Processes
A service cannot have UI elements or spawn a program that has UI elements. I thought this meant I couldn't use any GUI type controls, like TForm or TWinControl components. So I was trying to figure out how to launch a GUI program from a service (e.g., to the interactive desktop or by logging a user on and launching it to their desktop).
Turns out that as long as you don't have a dialog or some visual control that a user needs to interact with or respond to, it works perfectly fine to include GUI components in a service or an app the service spawns.
Problem 2 - "Control has no parent window"
I found one instance in my code where I created a control at runtime and didn't set its parent. Hard to track down, but fixed.
Problem 3 - External App only launched under "my" user profile
I set the service to Log On three ways, 1) as Local System, 2) as my username/password, and 3) as another admin user's username/password (with identical rights as me).
In all three instances, the return code from within the service to launch the external app indicated it successfully launched the app. However, only when the service was set to Log On using my username/password would the app actually run.
I found a information message in the system event log that said a BPL wasn't found for both of the other two instances. This was because I have a personal user path environment variable that includes an entry for the BPL directory. The other admin user and the Local System accounts do not have this. So of course the app failed to load the needed BPLs and therefore could not run.
Problem 4 - LocalSystem Access to File System
When we pushed the new code and modules to our production servers, the external app failed to properly launch and perform its task (but this time with no messages in the Windows event logs).
There are several parameters that the external app needs (too many to pass on the command line) so the service places all of the parameters into a uniquely named INI file and pass the name of the INI file to the external app. Once the external app finishes its task, it deletes the INI file.
As it turns out, the external app was launched using the Local System account, which didn't have access to the file system and therefore could not open/use the INI file. Once we granted the appropriate rights to the Local System account, it started working correctly in our production environment as well.
Everything works great now.

Start / Stop a Windows Service from a non-Administrator user account

I have a WindowsService named, say, BST. And I need to give a non-Administrator user, UserA, the permissions to Start/Stop this particular service. My service runs on a variety of Windows OS, starting from Windows Server 2003 to Windows 7.
How can I do this?
I Googled and found some stuff about giving permissions using the command [sc sdset], but I am not exactly sure about the parameters. I do not want to set the permissions for a group, but ONLY to a particular user, UserA in this case.
Below I have put together everything I learned about Starting/Stopping a Windows Service from a non-Admin user account, if anyone needs to know.
Primarily, there are two ways in which to Start / Stop a Windows Service.
1. Directly accessing the service through logon Windows user account.
2. Accessing the service through IIS using Network Service account.
Command line command to start / stop services:
C:/> net start <SERVICE_NAME>
C:/> net stop <SERVICE_NAME>
C# Code to start / stop services:
ServiceController service = new ServiceController(SERVICE_NAME);
//Start the service
if (service.Status == ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped)
{
service.Start();
service.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Running, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10.0));
}
//Stop the service
if (service.Status == ServiceControllerStatus.Running)
{
service.Stop();
service.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10.0));
}
Note 1:
When accessing the service through IIS, create a Visual Studio C# ASP.NET Web Application and put the code in there. Deploy the WebService to IIS Root Folder (C:\inetpub\wwwroot\) and you're good to go.
Access it by the url http:///.
1. Direct Access Method
If the Windows User Account from which either you give the command or run the code is a non-Admin account, then you need to set the privileges to that particular user account so it has the ability to start and stop Windows Services. This is how you do it.
Login to an Administrator account on the computer which has the non-Admin account from which you want to Start/Stop the service. Open up the command prompt and give the following command:
C:/>sc sdshow <SERVICE_NAME>
Output of this will be something like this:
D:(A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY)(A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;BA)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;IU)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;SU)S:(AU;FA;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;WD)
It lists all the permissions each User / Group on this computer has with regards to .
A description of one part of above command is as follows:
D:(A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY)
It has the default owner, default group, and it has the Security descriptor control flags (A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY):
ace_type - "A": ACCESS_ALLOWED_ACE_TYPE,
ace_flags - n/a,
rights - CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC, please refer to the Access Rights and Access Masks and Directory Services Access Rights
CC: ADS_RIGHT_DS_CREATE_CHILD - Create a child DS object.
LC: ADS_RIGHT_ACTRL_DS_LIST - Enumerate a DS object.
SW: ADS_RIGHT_DS_SELF - Access allowed only after validated rights checks supported by the object are performed. This flag can be used alone to perform all validated rights checks of the object or it can be combined with an identifier of a specific validated right to perform only that check.
RP: ADS_RIGHT_DS_READ_PROP - Read the properties of a DS object.
WP: ADS_RIGHT_DS_WRITE_PROP - Write properties for a DS object.
DT: ADS_RIGHT_DS_DELETE_TREE - Delete a tree of DS objects.
LO: ADS_RIGHT_DS_LIST_OBJECT - List a tree of DS objects.
CR: ADS_RIGHT_DS_CONTROL_ACCESS - Access allowed only after extended rights checks supported by the object are performed. This flag can be used alone to perform all extended rights checks on the object or it can be combined with an identifier of a specific extended right to perform only that check.
RC: READ_CONTROL - The right to read the information in the object's security descriptor, not including the information in the system access control list (SACL). (This is a Standard Access Right, please read more http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa379607(VS.85).aspx)
object_guid - n/a,
inherit_object_guid - n/a,
account_sid - "SY": Local system. The corresponding RID is SECURITY_LOCAL_SYSTEM_RID.
Now what we need to do is to set the appropriate permissions to Start/Stop Windows Services to the groups or users we want. In this case we need the current non-Admin user be able to Start/Stop the service so we are going to set the permissions to that user. To do that, we need the SID of that particular Windows User Account. To obtain it, open up the Registry (Start > regedit) and locate the following registry key.
LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
Under that there is a seperate Key for each an every user account in this computer, and the key name is the SID of each account. SID are usually of the format S-1-5-21-2103278432-2794320136-1883075150-1000. Click on each Key, and you will see on the pane to the right a list of values for each Key. Locate "ProfileImagePath", and by it's value you can find the User Name that SID belongs to. For instance, if the user name of the account is SACH, then the value of "ProfileImagePath" will be something like "C:\Users\Sach". So note down the SID of the user account you want to set the permissions to.
Note2:
Here a simple C# code sample which can be used to obtain a list of said Keys and it's values.
//LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList RegistryKey
RegistryKey profileList = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(keyName);
//Get a list of SID corresponding to each account on the computer
string[] sidList = profileList.GetSubKeyNames();
foreach (string sid in sidList)
{
//Based on above names, get 'Registry Keys' corresponding to each SID
RegistryKey profile = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(Path.Combine(keyName, sid));
//SID
string strSID = sid;
//UserName which is represented by above SID
string strUserName = (string)profile.GetValue("ProfileImagePath");
}
Now that we have the SID of the user account we want to set the permissions to, let's get down to it. Let's assume the SID of the user account is S-1-5-21-2103278432-2794320136-1883075150-1000.
Copy the output of the [sc sdshow ] command to a text editor. It will look like this:
D:(A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY)(A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;BA)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;IU)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;SU)S:(AU;FA;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;WD)
Now, copy the (A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY) part of the above text, and paste it just before the S:(AU;... part of the text. Then change that part to look like this:
(A;;RPWPCR;;;S-1-5-21-2103278432-2794320136-1883075150-1000)
Then add sc sdset at the front, and enclose the above part with quotes. Your final command should look something like the following:
sc sdset <SERVICE_NAME> "D:(A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY)(A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;BA)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;IU)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;SU)(A;;RPWPCR;;;S-1-5-21-2103278432-2794320136-1883075150-1000)S:(AU;FA;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;WD)"
Now execute this in your command prompt, and it should give the output as follows if successful:
[SC] SetServiceObjectSecurity SUCCESS
Now we're good to go! Your non-Admin user account has been granted permissions to Start/Stop your service! Try loggin in to the user account and Start/Stop the service and it should let you do that.
2. Access through IIS Method
In this case, we need to grant the permission to the IIS user "Network Services" instead of the logon Windows user account. The procedure is the same, only the parameters of the command will be changed. Since we set the permission to "Network Services", replace SID with the string "NS" in the final sdset command we used previously. The final command should look something like this:
sc sdset <SERVICE_NAME> "D:(A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY)(A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;BA)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;IU)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;SU)(A;;RPWPCR;;;NS)S:(AU;FA;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;WD)"
Execute it in the command prompt from an Admin user account, and voila! You have the permission to Start / Stop the service from any user account (irrespective of whether it ia an Admin account or not) using a WebMethod. Refer to Note1 to find out how to do so.
I use the SubInACL utility for this. For example, if I wanted to give the user job on the computer VMX001 the ability to start and stop the World Wide Web Publishing Service (also know as w3svc), I would issue the following command as an Administrator:
subinacl.exe /service w3svc /grant=VMX001\job=PTO
The permissions you can grant are defined as follows (list taken from here):
F : Full Control
R : Generic Read
W : Generic Write
X : Generic eXecute
L : Read controL
Q : Query Service Configuration
S : Query Service Status
E : Enumerate Dependent Services
C : Service Change Configuration
T : Start Service
O : Stop Service
P : Pause/Continue Service
I : Interrogate Service
U : Service User-Defined Control Commands
So, by specifying PTO, I am entitling the job user to Pause/Continue, Start, and Stop the w3svc service.
Edit: updated links to web.archive.org since the original MS links are dead.
Login as an administrator.
Download subinacl.exe from Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=23510
Grant permissions to the regular user account to manage the BST
services.
(subinacl.exe is in C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\).
cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\
subinacl /SERVICE \\MachineName\bst /GRANT=domainname.com\username=F or
subinacl /SERVICE \\MachineName\bst /GRANT=username=F
Logout and log back in as the user. They should now be able to
launch the BST service.
There is a free GUI Tool ServiceSecurityEditor
Which allows you to edit Windows Service permissions. I have successfully used it to give a non-Administrator user the rights to start and stop a service.
I had used "sc sdset" before I knew about this tool.
ServiceSecurityEditor feels like cheating, it's that easy :)
It's significantly easier to grant management permissions to a service using one of these tools:
Group Policy
Security Template
subinacl.exe command-line tool.
Here's the MSKB article with instructions for Windows Server 2008 / Windows 7, but the instructions are the same for 2000 and 2003.
subinacl.exe command-line tool is probably the only viable and very easy to use from anything in this post. You cant use a GPO with non-system services and the other option is just way way way too complicated.
Windows Service runs using a local system account.It can start automatically as the user logs into the system or it can be started manually.However, a windows service say BST can be run using a particular user account on the machine.This can be done as follows:start services.msc and go to the properties of your windows service,BST.From there you can give the login parameters of the required user.Service then runs with that user account and no other user can run that service.

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