NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE

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I am building a windows services that accesses files on another machine in
the domain.

My understanding is that I should use NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE as the
account to run the service under if I want to access resources on another
machine.

However, I get Access denied. I can't find very much about this account.
Mostly for accessing SQL Database. But I am trying to access files.

Any information would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Aaron

 

[Willy Denoyette [MVP]]

I am building a windows services that accesses files on another machine in
the domain.

My understanding is that I should use NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE as the
account to run the service under if I want to access resources on another
machine.

However, I get Access denied. I can't find very much about this account.
Mostly for accessing SQL Database. But I am trying to access files.

Any information would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Aaron

NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE is a local account and as such has not network
access, however, the credentials presented on the network when challenged
are the machine domain account credentials (domain\machineName). In order to
grant access to the machine account the machine must be an AD domain member.
If your machine is not an AD domain member you have to:
- impersonate using valid remote credentials or,
- run with domain credentials or,
- you need to create a USE record from within your service (Process.Start
using "net use ...." as command).

Willy.