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winapiprivileges

When is SeTcbPrivilege used? ("Act as part of the operating system.)

For what purpose(s) is the SeTcbPrivilege privilege in Windows used? Can it be used, for example, to run a program under the SYSTEM account?

Solution

  • Acting as a part of the operating system allows you to do things like create login tokens. It's unlikely that you would ever need to write a service that uses this privilege unless you're writing an authentication provider.

    Since you can create access tokens, you can act as any user. Of course, this means that you can run programs under the SYSTEM account, but there are much easier ways to run something as SYSTEM.