Limited User Turning Into Administrator

[Elliott Shevin]

This may be just a matter of my teenager having discovered one of the
administrator passwords on our machine, but every few weeks I discover his
account has been changed from limited to administrator itself.

Is there a known security bug that lets this happen?

We're running XP Home.

Thanks,
Elliott

 

[Guest]

Hi,

your first guess is the most probable cause...
There is no bug which allows your symptoms to happen.

It is not possible to do this without any user
intervention!

Hope this is a help.

p.s. change the administrator password and you know for
sure... next to that, there are programs (LC3opt or
something) which can retrieve the password from you
computer. You should make your administrator password at
least 10 characters with minimal a capital, number or
character. This will be a bit more secure.

With kind regards,

Hugo Leijtens

 

[Roger Abell]

An account can only be made into an admin by use
of another admin (or the system account, which is
actually an admin). So, if the machine is not hacked
so that the System account is being exploited, then
an admin account is being used.

Very possibly they have discovered that the built-in
Administrator account, accessible when using a safe
mode boot (if this is Home edition) has no password
on it (or worse, one that they have now put on it), and
are using this to change their account.
If you Start / Run cmd
and in the cmd windows enter
net localgroup administrators
this will list all accounts that are administrators,
even those that might be otherwise hidden from
the user interfaces.
Make sure that none are unrecognized, and that
you control and know the passwords on all of
them. Test each, and change to new passwords,
on each, using a safe mode boot if needed for the
built-in administrator account.