How to Impersonate local system account in c#

Question

I am trying to start/stop a windows service in the code from a web application.The web application runs as IUSR_ComputerName, but this account does not have enough access rights to star/stop the service.

How do I impersonate the local system account, so that I can stop/start the service?

Rajesh Vellore · Answer

How can we do impersonation in windows service for NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM of local system. I am able to do the impersonation for normal users only for "System" i am not able to do.

zirano latt · Answer

The following code snippet shows how to impersonate using C#. You can easily impersonate by calling Impersonator.Impersonate("domain","username","password"); method. public class Impersonator { [DllImport("advapi32.dll", SetLastError = true)] public static extern bool LogonUser(String lpszUsername, String lpszDomain, String lpszPassword, int dwLogonType, int dwLogonProvider, ref IntPtr phToken); [DllImport("kernel32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto)] public extern static bool CloseHandle(IntPtr handle); [DllImport("advapi32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)] public extern static bool DuplicateToken(IntPtr ExistingTokenHandle, int SECURITY_IMPERSONATION_LEVEL, ref IntPtr DuplicateTokenHandle); public static bool Impersonate(string domain, string userName, string password) { IntPtr tokenHandle = new IntPtr(0); IntPtr dupeTokenHandle = new IntPtr(0); bool returnValue try { const int LOGON32_PROVIDER_DEFAULT = 0; const int LOGON32_LOGON_INTERACTIVE = 2; tokenHandle = IntPtr.Zero; dupeTokenHandle = IntPtr.Zero; // Call LogonUser to obtain a handle to an access token. returnValue = LogonUser(userName, domain, password, LOGON32_LOGON_INTERACTIVE, LOGON32_PROVIDER_DEFAULT, ref tokenHandle); } catch (Exception ex) { returnValue=false; Console.WriteLine("Exception occurred. " + ex.Message); } return returnValue; } } Above code may not be unsafe for exception handling. I made it shorter for your easier understanding. Please go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.principal.windowsidentity.impersonate(VS.71).aspx for more information.

How to Impersonate local system account in c#

Answers (2)