Megathread: sudo, runas, mixed elevation of tabs, etc.

[hansmbakker]

Summary of the new feature/enhancement

Current situation:

• Suppose you are working on something in Powershell, CMD
• You went into some folder
• You built some history
• You find out that you need administrator rights for some command

Currently most console apps (Powershell, CMD) need to start a new session for getting administrator access. This results in a less optimal workflow, because then you lose

• your current working folder (you need to cd into it again)
• your command history (the administrator session has its own history)

Proposed technical implementation details (optional)

A bit like sudo, started with a button:

• Console sessions in terminal start with default permissions
• Terminal has button with padlock icon / text "upgrade to administrator" in one of the corners
• When you click the button, the current session is upgraded to a session with admin permissions or downgraded again to normal permissions
• Session command history and location (working directory) is kept

[oising]

@hansmbakker Windows Terminal (or any terminal for that matter) doesn't - and cannot - know anything about sessions, command history, or locations. It's just a (virtual) screen and a (virtual) keyboard that connects to whatever client (cmd, powershell, bash) the user wants to use. The responsibility for managing that information lies with the clients (applications) themselves. I understand what you're asking, and sympathize though. Using sudo in linux/osx makes life a bit easier at the command line, but unfortunately this isn't the way the Windows operating system is structured. Admin (elevated) processes and regular or restricted processes cannot communicate with each other. If you want something running as administrator, a new process is required.

Thanks for your feedback, but I'm going to close this as it's not feasible in the manner you would like.

[mdtauk]

Couldn't each tab run in it's own isolated process - with some being elevated, and others not - but in the same Window?

[oising]

@mdtauk In theory, yes. But (1) this isn't what the op is asking, and (2) I'm not certain if ConPTY is baked enough to allow this yet. At a minimum, I'd imagine the main terminal process would need to be elevated, or at least some kind of proxy process would need to be, but that means we'd then have to create a means of communication between the terminal, the proxy (which is a conpty server) and the elevated app (conpty client.) Things get hairy fast after that.

[mdtauk]

@oising Thanks for the reply. I think this suggestion has cropped up previously, and was wondering of the feasibility.

Its not as elegant as typing sudo or even elevate. But adding a profile for an elevated prompt which when clicked/tapped - brings up the UAC dialog, and then creates the elevated tab within the window - could be useful.

[hansmbakker]

It's a pity that it is unfeasible, but thank you for your explanation.

[DHowett-MSFT]

elevated tab within the window

Hosting a connection to an elevated process in a window owned by a medium-integrity (that is: not elevated) process is dangerous because any other medium-integrity process could possibly inject input into it or scrape output from it. That’s the sole reason we’ve been given by the windows security team to not endeavour to do this.

[hansmbakker]

Thanks for being transparent about it.

On the technical side, I’m wondering why sudo works while what I asked for can cause risks?

[mdtauk]

Thanks for being transparent about it.

On the technical side, I’m wondering why sudo works while what I asked for can cause risks?

Sudo is a Linux concept, and the way User and Admin concepts are handled between Linux and Windows are very different, and I guess that is what makes it not possible.

[sedwards2009]

Hosting a connection to an elevated process in a window owned by a medium-integrity (that is: not elevated) process is dangerous because any other medium-integrity process could possibly inject input into it or scrape output from it.

Anytime someone uses sudo inside a terminal running on their normal Windows account, that scenario happens. It is extremely common. Linux users/admins do it all the time. My web browser also has access to mega-tons of sensitive data and accounts which I care about, but the browser itself is also just a normal process subject to the attack described above.

I'm not really familiar with the Windows security model and what is possible, but is it an idea for the terminal process to run protected from injection and scraping by default?

[zadjii-msft]

@DHowett-MSFT do we have a sudo megathread that combines all the 100 ways we've said no? Because we really should at this point