[c#] How to use LogonUser properly to impersonate domain user from workgroup client

ASP.NET: Impersonate against a domain on VMWare

This question is what I am asking, but the answer does not provide details on how the _token is derived. It seems to only use WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Token so there's no impersonation happening.

Can I impersonate a user on a different Active Directory domain in .NET?

This next question has conflicting answers, with the accepted one bearing a comment "I'm beginning to suspect that my problem lies elsewhere." Not helpful.

LogonUser works only for my domain

This next question seems to imply it is not possible, but it deals with 2 domains so I am not sure if it is relevant.

My real question is:

• Is it possible? And if so,
• How? or Where did I go wrong?

What I have tried so far is, using the code from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/chf6fbt4%28v=VS.80%29.aspx

bool returnValue = LogonUser(user, domain, password,
            LOGON32_LOGON_NETWORK, LOGON32_PROVIDER_DEFAULT,
            ref tokenHandle);
// after this point, returnValue = false

The Win32 error is

Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password

I was having the same problem. Don't know if you've solved this or not, but what I was really trying to do was access a network share with AD credentials. WNetAddConnection2() is what you need to use in that case.

Very few posts suggest using LOGON_TYPE_NEW_CREDENTIALS instead of LOGON_TYPE_NETWORK or LOGON_TYPE_INTERACTIVE. I had an impersonation issue with one machine connected to a domain and one not, and this fixed it. The last code snippet in this post suggests that impersonating across a forest does work, but it doesn't specifically say anything about trust being set up. So this may be worth trying:

const int LOGON_TYPE_NEW_CREDENTIALS = 9;
const int LOGON32_PROVIDER_WINNT50 = 3;
bool returnValue = LogonUser(user, domain, password,
            LOGON_TYPE_NEW_CREDENTIALS, LOGON32_PROVIDER_WINNT50,
            ref tokenHandle);

MSDN says that LOGON_TYPE_NEW_CREDENTIALS only works when using LOGON32_PROVIDER_WINNT50.

this works for me, full working example (I wish more people would do this):

//logon impersonation
using System.Runtime.InteropServices; // DllImport
using System.Security.Principal; // WindowsImpersonationContext
using System.Security.Permissions; // PermissionSetAttribute

...

class Program {

    // obtains user token
    [DllImport("advapi32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
    public static extern bool LogonUser(string pszUsername, string pszDomain, string pszPassword,
        int dwLogonType, int dwLogonProvider, ref IntPtr phToken);

    // closes open handes returned by LogonUser
    [DllImport("kernel32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
    public extern static bool CloseHandle(IntPtr handle);

    public void DoWorkUnderImpersonation() {
        //elevate privileges before doing file copy to handle domain security
        WindowsImpersonationContext impersonationContext = null;
        IntPtr userHandle = IntPtr.Zero;
        const int LOGON32_PROVIDER_DEFAULT = 0;
        const int LOGON32_LOGON_INTERACTIVE = 2;
        string domain = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ImpersonationDomain"];
        string user = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ImpersonationUser"];
        string password = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ImpersonationPassword"];

        try {
            Console.WriteLine("windows identify before impersonation: " + WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name);

            // if domain name was blank, assume local machine
            if (domain == "")
                domain = System.Environment.MachineName;

            // Call LogonUser to get a token for the user
            bool loggedOn = LogonUser(user,
                                        domain,
                                        password,
                                        LOGON32_LOGON_INTERACTIVE,
                                        LOGON32_PROVIDER_DEFAULT,
                                        ref userHandle);

            if (!loggedOn) {
                Console.WriteLine("Exception impersonating user, error code: " + Marshal.GetLastWin32Error());
                return;
            }

            // Begin impersonating the user
            impersonationContext = WindowsIdentity.Impersonate(userHandle);

            Console.WriteLine("Main() windows identify after impersonation: " + WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name);

            //run the program with elevated privileges (like file copying from a domain server)
            DoWork();

        } catch (Exception ex) {
            Console.WriteLine("Exception impersonating user: " + ex.Message);
        } finally {
            // Clean up
            if (impersonationContext != null) {
                impersonationContext.Undo();
            }

            if (userHandle != IntPtr.Zero) {
                CloseHandle(userHandle);
            }
        }
    }


    private void DoWork() {
        //everything in here has elevated privileges

        //example access files on a network share through e$ 
        string[] files = System.IO.Directory.GetFiles(@"\\domainserver\e$\images", "*.jpg");
    }
}

Invalid login/password could be also related to issues in your DNS server - that's what happened to me and cost me good 5 hours of my life. See if you can specify ip address instead on domain name.

It's better to use a SecureString:

var password = new SecureString();
var phPassword phPassword = Marshal.SecureStringToGlobalAllocUnicode(password);
IntPtr phUserToken;
LogonUser(username, domain, phPassword, LOGON32_LOGON_INTERACTIVE,  LOGON32_PROVIDER_DEFAULT, out phUserToken);

And:

Marshal.ZeroFreeGlobalAllocUnicode(phPassword);
password.Dispose();

Function definition:

private static extern bool LogonUser(
  string pszUserName,
  string pszDomain,
  IntPtr pszPassword,
  int dwLogonType,
  int dwLogonProvider,
  out IntPtr phToken);

I have been successfull at impersonating users in another domain, but only with a trust set up between the 2 domains.

var token = IntPtr.Zero;
var result = LogonUser(userID, domain, password, LOGON32_LOGON_INTERACTIVE, LOGON32_PROVIDER_DEFAULT, ref token);
if (result)
{
    return WindowsIdentity.Impersonate(token);
}