Hi @ll, the import function of Windows Mail executes a rogue program C:\Program.exe with the credentials of another account, resulting in a privilege escalation! 1. Fetch <http://home.arcor.de/skanthak/download/SENTINEL.EXE> and save it as C:\Program.exe 2. Start Windows Mail (part of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008) 3. On the File menu, click Identities 4. On the entry page of the wizard click [ Continue > ] 5. Select "(*) Import identities of other Windows account" and click [ Continue > ] 6. Enter account name and password of any Windows account 7. See the message from C:\Program.exe when Windows Mail runs the UNQUOTED command line C:\Program Files\Windows Mail\WinMail.Exe /identcatalog >From <http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/cc144175.aspx> or <http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/cc144101.aspx>: | Note: If any element of the command string contains or might contain | spaces, it must be enclosed in quotation marks. Otherwise, if the | element contains a space, it will not parse correctly. For instance, | "My Program.exe" starts the application properly. If you use | My Program.exe without quotation marks, then the system attempts to | launch My with Program.exe as its first command line argument. >From <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ms682425.aspx>: | Security Remarks | | The lpApplicationName parameter can be NULL, and the executable name | must be the first white space-delimited string in lpCommandLine. | If the executable or path name has a space in it, there is a risk that | a different executable could be run because of the way the function | parses spaces. Avoid the following example, because the function | attempts to run "Program.exe", if it exists, instead of "MyApp.exe". ... | If a malicious user were to create an application called "Program.exe" | on a system, any program that incorrectly calls CreateProcess using | the Program Files directory will run this application instead of the | intended application. | | To avoid this problem, do not pass NULL for lpApplicationName. | If you do pass NULL for lpApplicationName, use quotation marks around | the executable path in lpCommandLine, as shown in the example below. "Long" filenames were introduced 20 years ago, but M$FTs developers still can't handle them properly, and their QA is unable to detect such silly and trivial to spot bugs! regards Stefan Kanthak PS: yes, it needs administrative privileges to write C:\Program.exe. BUT: all the user account(s) created during Windows setup have administrative privileges. PPS: NO, the user account control is NO security boundary! <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2526083> | Same-desktop Elevation in UAC is not a security boundary and can be hijacked | by unprivileged software that runs on the same desktop. Same-desktop | Elevation should be considered a convenience feature, and from a security | perspective, "Protected Administrator" should be considered the equivalent | of "Administrator."