New Owner in Take-Ownership Operation

 Last reviewed: September 25, 1995
Article ID: Q111541
The information in this article applies to:
  • Microsoft Win32 Application Programming Interface (API) included with: 

        - Microsoft Windows NT versions 3.1 and 3.5

SUMMARY

When ownership of a file is taken, the user performing the operation becomes the new owner. The exception to this rule is when the user is a member of the "Administrators" group. In this situation, the ownership of the file is assigned to the Administrators group.

The reasoning for this behavior is that the administrators on a particular system work together. When one administrator takes ownership of a file, the others should also receive access.

MORE INFORMATION

When a take-ownership operation is performed, the system assigns the new owner SID based on the TOKEN_OWNER field of the user s access token.

When a user logs on to a Windows NT system, the logon process builds an access token to represent the user. Normally the TOKEN_OWNER field in the access token is set equal to TOKEN_USER (the user s SID). However, when the user is a member of the Administrators group, the system sets the TOKEN_OWNER field to the Administrators SID.

Although Windows NT does not provide a user interface for changing the TOKEN_OWNER field in the user s access token, it is possible to programatically change this value via the SetTokenInformation() Win32 API (application programming interface).

Additional reference words: 3.10 3.50
KBCategory: kbprg
KBSubcategory: BseSecurity

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Last reviewed: September 25, 1995
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