INFO: New Owner in Take-Ownership Operation

• Microsoft Win32 Application Programming Interface (API), used with:
  • Microsoft Windows NT versions 3.1, 3.5
  • Microsoft Windows 2000

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 query words: 3.10 3.50

Keywords : kbprg kbKernBase kbWinOS2000 kbSecurity kbDSupport kbGrpKernBase
Version : winnt:3.1,3.5
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbinfo