CHOWN

The CHOWN application was designed to be a small command line tool that demonstrates that it is possible to assign a new owner to a file, even if Microsoft asserts that this is impossible. Not the first implementation of such a program, but source is included, so you may understand how this works.

To set a new owner of a file, only ordinary Win32 API calls are needed. All you have to do is: - enable the Backup, Restore and Take Ownership privileges (with AdjustTokenPrivileges()). These are usually granted to Administrators. I also enable the Bypass Traverse Checking privilege, but I have not yet fully investigated if this is really necessary. - find the SID for the new owner with GetAccountSid() - create an empty Security Descriptor with InitializeSecurityDescriptor() - fill the owner of the Security Descriptor with SetSecurityDescriptorOwner(), ignore group, DACL and SACL - apply this SD to the file you want to modify with SetFileSecurity(szCurrentFile,(SECURITY_INFORMATION)(OWNER_SECURITY_INFORMATION),...)