How does impersonation in DCOM work?

Question

I have a DCOM client and server applications which use OLE automation marshaller. They work fine when run on the same PC but when the server is on a different PC not in the same domain I get E_ACCESSDENIED (0x80070005).

Server PC is configured with dcomcnfg to give all access to any DCOM object to the user whose login and password I specify on the client. ServerApp and its type library are registered on the server pc.

Type library is also registered on the client PC. I specify server name directly in the ClientApp so no dcomcnfg configuration is needed on the Client PC as far as I understand.

CreateInstanceEx() with server name, login, domain and password works fine. It returns IUnknown and at the same time starts ServerApp on server PC.

But when I try to QueryInterface() for the interface which server supports, I get E_ACCESSDENIED.

Analyzing the Security Event Log, I have two records there:

First, a successful network login by the user whose credentials I specify in ClientApp. This happens when I call CreateInstanceEx().

Next, a failed login attempt by the user under which I'm logged in on a client PC. Since two PCs are not in a domain, this user is unknown to server PC.

Now, why the heck would THIS user be logging into server, especially when I call QueryInterface of all things?

Studying CreateInterfaceEx params, it appears there's some kind of impersonation mechanism going on. But it's unclear who impersonates who. There are THREE user credentials involved:

1. User under which ServerApp runs on the server PC (as configured in dcomcnfg).

2. User whose credentials ClientApp specifies when connecting.

3. User under whose credentials ClientApp runs on client PC.

No matter how you look at it, if #3 is involved it's one user too much. If DCOM is going to identify/impersonate #3 on server PC anyway, why do I need to specify #2's credentials? To what point?

It would have seem logical for DCOM to impersonate #2 because this is what I have explicitly specified as my credentials. But why the second login attempt then?

Can someone please explain how exactly the impersonation works, and also if there's a way to just ignore it and run as user which is specified in dcomcnfg?

Paving

Answer 1

Answering my own question. After much exploration it became apparent that DCOM has TWO different identification cases:

1. Authorization for object creation (CoCreateInstanceEx)
2. Authorization for method calls.

For reasons unknown, #2 doesn't inherit #1 settings. By default it uses the credentials of the client process, hence strange logins.

There are two ways to specify credentials for #2. First one is CoSetProxyBlanket. It sets credentials for a specified proxy (marshaller-unmarshaller) only:

CoCreateInstanceEx(IID_IObject1, /*login, pass*/, obj1); //Success!
//Logged in and recevied IObject1 proxy in obj1

obj1->DoSomething();
//IObject1 proxy in obj1 now tries to login under process credentials.
//Failure! E_ACCESSDENIED

CoSetProxyBlanket(obj1, /*login, pass*/); //Success!
//IObject1 proxy is now authorized.

obj1->DoSomething(); //Success!
obj1->QueryInterface(IID_IObject2, obj2); //Success!

obj2->DoSomethingElse(); //Failure!
//This different proxy for IObject2 have not yet been authorized.

CoSetProxyBlanket(obj2, /*login, pass*/);
//etc.

It's important to note that while CoCreateInstanceEx requires impersonation level to be at least IMPERSONATE, CoSetProxyBlanket doesn't seem to work on anything except IDENTIFY.

Another option is to use CoInitializeSecurity to set default credentials for the whole process. Then you don't have to call CoSetProxyBlanket on every proxy:

CoInitializeSecurity(/* login, pass */);
CoCreateInstanceEx(IID_IUnknown, /*login, pass*/, obj); //Success!
obj->DoSomething(); //Success!

When using CoInitializeSecurity on the client you have to specify asAuthSvc too, even though MSDN says you don't.

The drawback of this method is obviously that if you have several DCOM objects from different PCs you're going to have to specify all the credentials in this call and those are probably going to be tried against every computer every time you open a different proxy.

It also is not reliable when you're running from a DLL (what if a process has different default security?). So, it's probably better to implement a QueryInterface wrapper which CoSetsProxyBlanket before returning from every call.

Paving

Answer 2

For those who are working in Delphi there is one little note that can save a lot of your time. After you did obj as ISomeInterface operation, you have to call CoSetProxyBlanket for the new instance. This could be not very obvious, but all we know that as operator calls QueryInterface method, and it can return new instance.

Jackquelinejackrabbit