Given a group name and a user account, I would like to know if the supplied user belongs to a particular group. The user can be a local user or a domain user and the group could be a local group or a domain group and the group could also be nested inside other groups. In short I am looking for a function like bool IsUserMemberOf(User, Group)
that will internally call the appropriate Win32 APIs to do the search. I guess the process making the above query should have the necessary privileges to query local and AD groups. I guess runing the process under enterprise admin account should do the job of querying any DCs in the forest but may not work for machines that are not part of a domain. Any ideas on what account this querying process should run so that it can query the LSA as well as the AD?
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You need to read up on GetTokenInformation (TOKEN_USER), AllocateAndInitializeSid and CheckTokenMemberShip.

rtn
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The answer was never accepted, possibly because the OP was in the same situation I'm in: I don't have a token, just a SID & name each for the account and group. Is there any way of getting a token without knowing the password? Or, is there an LSA function that will do it with just the SID? I'm still stuck after hunting. – Nicholas Wilson Dec 19 '12 at 11:22
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I'm in the same position, there are two microsoft official examples, neither work, both always return administrator group for every user. – Owl Dec 01 '17 at 10:50
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UserPrincipal.IsMemberOf(GroupPrincipal) "returns a Boolean value that specifies whether the principal is a member of the specified group".

Mark Brackett
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Magnus is right, you must use CheckTokenMembership
You can find a sample in UnlockPolicy.c (download the full source here), function ShouldUnlockForUser
and UsagerEstDansGroupe
(excuse my French;).
Here is the guts of it :
HRESULT IsUserInGroup(HANDLE user, const wchar_t* groupe)
{
HRESULT result = E_FAIL;
SID_NAME_USE snu;
WCHAR szDomain[256];
DWORD dwSidSize = 0;
DWORD dwSize = sizeof szDomain / sizeof * szDomain;
if ((LookupAccountNameW(NULL, groupe, 0, &dwSidSize, szDomain, &dwSize, &snu) == 0)
&& (ERROR_INSUFFICIENT_BUFFER == GetLastError()))
{
SID* pSid = (SID*)malloc(dwSidSize);
if (LookupAccountNameW(NULL, groupe, pSid, &dwSidSize, szDomain, &dwSize, &snu))
{
BOOL b;
if (CheckTokenMembership(user, pSid, &b))
{
if (b == TRUE)
{
result = S_OK;
}
}
else
{
result = S_FALSE;
}
}
//Si tout vas bien (la presque totalitée des cas), on delete notre pointeur
//avec le bon operateur.
free(pSid);
}
return result;
}

ixe013
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A handle is returned by a method that either authenticates the user (like `LogonUser`) or retreives it from the current context (like `WTSQueryUserToken`). Which one to use greatly depends on context... Ask a question, the SO community will provide more helpful answer ! – ixe013 Dec 02 '17 at 15:29
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2Note this wont work for an administrator. Administrators are only in the group when the priveledges are escalated. – Owl Dec 05 '17 at 13:29