C# Process.Start with credentials fails with Access Denied

Question

I have a Win Forms application in C# which runs on employees PC's. Within the application, i call another executable using Process.Start, but i pass a username and password of a user which has administrator privileges on the domain, because employees don't have permissions to run the executable.

The executable is in a folder on C:

The exe starts successfully on Windows XP machines, but fails with "Access Denied" error on Windows 7. i didn't find a solution. Any idea?

try
        {
            var pass = new SecureString();
            pass.AppendChar('b');
            pass.AppendChar('l');
            pass.AppendChar('a');
            pass.AppendChar('b');
            pass.AppendChar('l');
            pass.AppendChar('a');

             var pro = new ProcessStartInfo
            {
                FileName = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory + "myExe.exe",
                UserName = "username",
                Password = pass,
                Domain = "domain",
                UseShellExecute = false,
                RedirectStandardError = true,
                RedirectStandardOutput = true,
               RedirectStandardInput = true
            };
             Process.Start(pro); 

        }
        catch (Exception x)
        {
            MessageBox.Show("Failed to call updater.\n" + Help.ErrorMsg(x)); Application.Exit();
        }

Answer 1

Hei,

Win Forms application must run with admin privileges in order to start another process with higher privileges.

Your problem is not related to c#. It's a UAC problem.

Given the fact that you are giving them and exe to run something with elevated rights, I assume that you took in consideration that an user can use a decompiler to see the credentials.

• Check a simple solution (and dangerous one) to create a shortcut that lets a standard user to run an app with elevated permissions: https://www.howtogeek.com/124087/how-to-create-a-shortcut-that-lets-a-standard-user-run-an-application-as-administrator/
• Or check this for another idea to pass the UAC: https://superuser.com/questions/171917/force-a-program-to-run-without-administrator-privileges-or-uac

Also, if you wanna do it right, I suggest using an MDM solution like Microsoft SCCM ( https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/system-center-configuration-manager ). With something like this you can do:

• In console updates
• application delivery
• software update
• many more

You can control end users PCs and you don't have to give them elevated rights.