Download sudoWn 1.0.0.2

Zarc.oh points us to a new version of sudoWn, which stands for ‘superuser do for Windows’. The program has arrived at the second release, which has been given version numbering 1.0.0.2 and via this link can be downloaded as an msi installation package. SudoWn is able to run programs in Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 under a user account with limited rights that require administrator rights without leaving the restricted environment. The developer describes how sudoWn works, as well as the changelog since the first public release:

The sudoWn project can execute individual programs (or even a whole Windows shell) with temporary Administrator privileges under your user profile. This means you can use a low privileged environment and elevate your rights transitionally for software installation or systemwide configuration comfortably.

The sudoWn tool consists of a Windows system service and a client component. The service waits for a signal from the client after which it places the current logged in user from the Users Group to the Administrators Group. (this only happens if the current user is a member of the local Sudoers group so non-sudoers can’t elevate rights) The service then notifies the client that it is time to launch the process. The client launches the process in a similar way to Run as… but in the name of the current logged in and now admin privileged user. Just after the process starts the service immediately removes the user account from the Administrators group.

New in 1.0.0.2

• FIXED: context menu handler is not available for msi packages
• FIXED: sudo don’t halt when service is stopped
• FIXED: user is removed from Administrators group but isn’t added to the Users group during initial configuration occasionally leading to Debugger Users membership
• FIXED: initial configuration group add algorithm can fail on non-English Windows editions
• now sudo waits for service response for 10 seconds (useful on slow or busy systems)

New in 1.0.0.1

• now password can be mistyped 3 times before generating an error
• password cache time increased to 3 minutes

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