windows - How to create directory with all rights granted to everyone

Question

I need to programmatically create a directory that grants "Full Control" to the group "Everyone". If I use

CreateDirectory(path, NULL);

This will, according to the Win32 SDK documentation, create a directory that inherits from its parent directory. I do not want to inherit the access rights of the parent directory I need to ensure that "Everyone" has full control over the directory.

Obviously, this will require setting up the SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES structure with the appropriate security descriptor. How do I do that?

Answer 1

Here's one technique that seems to work:

SID_IDENTIFIER_AUTHORITY SIDAuthWorld = SECURITY_WORLD_SID_AUTHORITY;
PSID everyone_sid = NULL;
AllocateAndInitializeSid(&SIDAuthWorld, 1, SECURITY_WORLD_RID, 
   0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, &everyone_sid);

EXPLICIT_ACCESS ea;
ZeroMemory(&ea, sizeof(EXPLICIT_ACCESS));
ea.grfAccessPermissions = SPECIFIC_RIGHTS_ALL | STANDARD_RIGHTS_ALL;
ea.grfAccessMode = SET_ACCESS;
ea.grfInheritance = NO_INHERITANCE;
ea.Trustee.TrusteeForm = TRUSTEE_IS_SID;
ea.Trustee.TrusteeType = TRUSTEE_IS_WELL_KNOWN_GROUP;
ea.Trustee.ptstrName  = (LPWSTR)everyone_sid;

PACL acl = NULL;
SetEntriesInAcl(1, &ea, NULL, &acl);

PSECURITY_DESCRIPTOR sd = (PSECURITY_DESCRIPTOR)LocalAlloc(LPTR, 
                                   SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR_MIN_LENGTH);
InitializeSecurityDescriptor(sd, SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR_REVISION);
SetSecurityDescriptorDacl(sd, TRUE, acl, FALSE);

SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES sa;
sa.nLength = sizeof(SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES);
sa.lpSecurityDescriptor = sd;
sa.bInheritHandle = FALSE;

CreateDirectory(path, &sa);

FreeSid(everyone_sid);
LocalFree(sd);
LocalFree(acl);

Note that this sample code has absolutely no error checking -- you'll have to supply that yourself.