CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#windows-serviceswmi
Ashilta
Ashilta

Reputation: 193

Retrieve and use service 'Log on as' credentials in C#

I'm currently writing a Windows Service which will be required to interact with an on-premise Exchange server. Quite rightly, we've come to the conclusion that hard-coding the Exchange credentials is a very bad idea, but so is storing them in a config file in plain text. We've come to the conclusion that creating a service account that owns the mailbox in question should satisfy our requirements, however I've hit the following problem:

I've started to use a ManagementObjectSearcher to get the Username of the account running a service on my PC, however I'm not sure how to, or even if, I can get the password. I've tried this:

    class Program
{

    public static ManagementObjectSearcher Searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(new SelectQuery("select * from Win32_Service where name = 'netlogon'"));

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {

        ManagementObjectCollection Response = Searcher.Get();

        Console.WriteLine(Response.Count);

        foreach (ManagementObject Item in Response)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(Item.ToString());
        }

        Console.ReadLine();
    }

}

Unfortunately, I don't get a Password back. There's some suggestion from the EWS API documentation (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dn626019(v=exchg.150).aspx) that I can grab the credentials of the currently logged in user, but I looked through the referenced code samples and can find no suggestion of how this is doable.

For clarity, I can get the username, that's fine. I need the password... Any help would be appreciated!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2835

Answers (1)

Ashilta
Ashilta

Reputation: 193

It seems there are two acceptable answers:

One that @rene proposed involves using the Microsoft CredentialCache type to return the network credentials of the currently logged in user, which in a service context seems to just be the 'log on as' credentials. Details found here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.credentialcache.defaultnetworkcredentials(v=vs.110).aspx

The second is one that I Found, which involves simply not adding credentials to the EWS API ExchangeService type, in which case the credentials of the users running the service will automatically be passed through to Exchange.

Upvotes: 1

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