Programmatically assign the permission to a registry subkey

Question

Here is how we manually assign the permissions to a registry key:

To assign permissions to a registry key

Open Registry Editor. Click the key to which you want to assign permissions.
On the Edit menu, click Permissions.
Assign an access level to the selected key as follows:
To grant the user permission to read the key contents, but not save any changes made to the file, under Permissions for name, for Read, select the Allow check box.
To grant the user permission to open, edit, and take ownership of the selected key, under Permissions for name, for Full Control, select the Allow check box.
To grant the user special permission in the selected key, click Advanced.

So my question is, would it be possible to do it programmatically? Say, if I want to grant Users full control permission on a particular subkey, how should I write the code in C#? Thanks very much.

score 7 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 09 '21 at 15:52

Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey key;
key = Microsoft.Win32.Registry.LocalMachine;
RegistrySecurity rs = new RegistrySecurity();
rs = key.GetAccessControl();
string currentUserStr = Environment.UserDomainName + "\\" + Environment.UserName;
rs.AddAccessRule(
    new RegistryAccessRule(
        currentUserStr, 
        RegistryRights.WriteKey 
        | RegistryRights.ReadKey 
        | RegistryRights.Delete 
        | RegistryRights.FullControl, 
        AccessControlType.Allow));

This will assign the access rights to the specified user to the registry key 'key'

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 17 '16 at 22:38

5

RegistrySecurity class is also useful here. So we can write the following code to apply access rules on the registry key for a current user.

RegistrySecurity rs = new RegistrySecurity(); // it is right string for this code
string currentUserStr = Environment.UserDomainName + "\\" + Environment.UserName;
rs.AddAccessRule(new RegistryAccessRule(currentUserStr, RegistryRights.WriteKey | RegistryRights.ReadKey | RegistryRights.Delete | RegistryRights.FullControl, AccessControlType.Allow));

edited Nov 17 '16 at 22:38

Cristian Ciupitu

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answered Jun 08 '12 at 02:43

woodykiddy

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For giving permissions to the "everyone" user in a language agnostic way, pass `new SecurityIdentifier(WellKnownSidType.WorldSid, null)` instead of `currentUserStr`. – Uwe Keim Dec 08 '15 at 10:44

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:30

1

It is about RegSetKeySecurity API, which is interfaced to from .NET code via RegistryKey.SetAccessControl, see Using RegSetKeySecurity to avoid registry redirection

edited May 23 '17 at 10:30

Community

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answered Oct 28 '11 at 09:42

Roman R.

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Programmatically assign the permission to a registry subkey

3 Answers3