Question

Good Day,

My web app is set to use Windows Authentication and Impersontation is set to true.

I wan’t to launch a process using the logged-in user account. However, when I tried to launch notepad.exe, it was run as a NETWORK SERVICE.

I’ve tried different impersonation techniques, but none of them worked.

Please help.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998351.aspx#paght000023_impersonatingbyusingwindowsidentity

Answer 1

Simple impersonation won’t allow you to start a process as another user. You would have to use CreateProcessAsUser from the Windows API together with the appropriate privileges

The CreateProcessAsUser function does not need the password of a user. It requires a primary token which can be obtained from the System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity object. Your ASP.NET process must have the Act as part of the operating system privilege to get an impersonation-level token.

How To: Use Impersonation and Delegation in ASP.NET 2.0 has all the details on this topic.

A related question which also might be relevant is this one: Using Process.Start() to start a process as a different user from within a Windows Service.