CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#asp.netiissecurityuser-accounts
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Reputation: 15111

Can an application running under a less privileged account start a process executing another application under an administrative account?

I am logged in as the administrator when I installed an application named pdflatex.exe on my server. This application works as a converter from LaTeX input file to Pdf file.

I host an Asp.net MVC 3 application running under an Application Pool Identity with Load User Profile = True.

The Asp.net MVC 3 code contains a code that executes pdflatex.exe using System.Diagnostic.Process instance as follows:

        Process p = new Process();

        p.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
        p.Exited += new EventHandler(p_Exited);

        p.StartInfo.Arguments = "-interaction=nonstopmode " + inputpath;
        p.StartInfo.WorkingDirectory = @"c:\mydomain.com\working";

        p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
        p.StartInfo.FileName = "pdflatex.exe";

        p.Start();
        p.WaitForExit();

From the scenario above,

Can an application running under a less privileged account start a process executing another application under an administrative account?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 485

Answers (2)

Ken White
Ken White

Reputation: 125729

No, a lower privilege application cannot start an elevated application without properly asking for UAC elevation (which prompts for an administrative username and password). If you could elevate a spawned app from a lower-access app, it would be a major security gap.

Upvotes: 1

Jeremiah Willcock
Jeremiah Willcock

Reputation: 30989

Why do you need administrator access to run pdflatex? That is a standard user program and shouldn't require any special privileges other than to be run from a directory that it can write to.

Upvotes: 1

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