Friday, September 02, 2005

Hidden Users on Windows

This article documents the failure of the User Account Manager in the Windows Control Panel to report interactive logons made with the netapi. This security issue has been verified on Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Home, and Windows XP Professional. Microsoft was notified of this issue on July 28, 2005. The problem is not with the netapi or the ability to create users but with the User Account Manager in Windows. It simply fails to list all of the users that are on the system.

This issue was noticed while exploring the netapi on windows - users created with the netuseradd function failed to show up in the User Account Manager (an example follows). The failure to list users made with the netapi presents a problem for obvious reasons; home users and even administrators expect to see all of the users on their system when they manage them from the Control Panel.

The solution in all versions of windows is simple. Do not depend on the User Account Manager when managing user accounts on your system. Instead, users should use the Local Users and Groups management snapin. This is accessible via Control Panel >> Administrative Tools >> Computer Management >> Local Users and Groups. You can also access this snapin by running lusrmgr.msc from the run box.

If you are one of the unfortunate ones stuck with XP Home Edition you don’t have access to the Local Users and Groups management snapin. As an alternative it is possible to list all of the users on your system from the command-line:


FOR DETAILS

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AdSenseGuy said...
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