Taking ownership of files with 'broken' permissions

Question

I\'m trying to overcome the following situation.

Given a directory stored on an NTFS volume, where:

1. The directory owner is set to someone else (a non-p

Answer 1

You need to take ownership before you add access.

using (var user = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent())
{
    var ownerSecurity = new FileSecurity();
    ownerSecurity.SetOwner(user.User);
    File.SetAccessControl("c:\\path\\to\\broken", ownerSecurity);

    var accessSecurity = new FileSecurity();
    accessSecurity.AddAccessRule(new FileSystemAccessRule(user.User, FileSystemRights.FullControl, AccessControlType.Allow));
    File.SetAccessControl("c:\\path\\to\\broken", accessSecurity);
}

Also if you are setting DirectorySecurity you will need this

using (var user = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent())
{
    var ownerSecurity = new DirectorySecurity();
    ownerSecurity.SetOwner(user.User);
    Directory.SetAccessControl("c:\\path\\to\\broken", ownerSecurity);

    var accessSecurity = new DirectorySecurity();
    accessSecurity.AddAccessRule(new FileSystemAccessRule(user.User, FileSystemRights.FullControl, AccessControlType.Allow));
    Directory.SetAccessControl("c:\\path\\to\\broken", accessSecurity);
}

If that doesn't work try this

http://blog.mikeobrien.net/2009/11/taking-ownership-and-setting-admin.html

Answer 2

I had the same problem and just posting here for anybody else who may come here searching like me:

You need to explicitly enable SeTakeOwnershipPrivilege in code. I found Process Privileges to be really helpful dealing with this sort of thing.

Here is how it fixed my code (seems like for some reason even though i have the privilege, the process doesn't unless i explicitly enable it):

using (new ProcessPrivileges.PrivilegeEnabler(Process.GetCurrentProcess(), Privilege.TakeOwnership))
{
    directoryInfo = new DirectoryInfo(path);
    directorySecurity = directoryInfo.GetAccessControl();

    directorySecurity.SetOwner(WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().User);
    Directory.SetAccessControl(path, directorySecurity);    
}

PS: Thanks Simon.. your answer gave me a place to start from.