Question

My application needs to run with administrator privileges because of some specific phone components.

I’ve build an executable that does nothing else than calling the real application with the specific local administrator account (username and password).

I use the ProcessStartInfo and Process class for this purpose.

The problem: Some word interop is being done and the required word templates are stored on a unc share.

Local admin -> no domain/network context -> no access to shares.

Are there any other solutions than these two:

• put a domain account into the administrator group on the affected machines and call the app. with this user
• put the word templates onto the local drive

Maybe there are some uac elevation experts out there?

I think the best way would be to temporarily switch back to the “real” domain user context, but I don’t know how this should work without providing his credentials…

Thanks for reading – and maybe feedback!

Answer 1

Having that small application, which knows the administrator password is a security nightmare. Have you tried opening the .exe for your small app in notepad? I’m fairly sure that the password will be there – in plaintext for anyone to read.

It is far better to solve this by giving the user running the app the required privileges. Full administrator access is very seldom required. Have you tried looking into exactly what the phone app needs? Sysinternal’s Process Monitor is often very good to use.