The access and audit cmdlets wrote the owner of an item back with the
entries they changed. For a DACL without the auto-inherit flag, Windows
returns the owner and the group even when only the DACL is read, and the
cmdlets wrote every section that the descriptor held. Without the Restore
privilege, or on a file server that refuses the owner, the write failed
with error 1307 (#34).
- Add-NTFSAccess, Clear-NTFSAccess, Add-NTFSAudit, and Clear-NTFSAudit
read only the DACL or the SACL. FileSystemSecurity2.Write(),
Remove-NTFSAccess, and Remove-NTFSAudit write only the sections they
read, which also fixes the access inheritance cmdlets.
- Read together with the SACL, the inherited entries of such a DACL lose
their inherited flag when the parent folder has no SACL, and the
cmdlets stored them as explicit copies. Get-NTFSSecurityDescriptor now
reads the DACL in a separate call.
- Set-NTFSSecurityDescriptor writes only the sections that changed since
they were read; an unchanged descriptor writes nothing (maintainer
decision of 2026-10-06).
- Clear-NTFSAudit writes nothing for an item without a SACL, and reports
an error without the Security privilege (maintainer decision).
The regression tests failed before and pass after the fix in Windows
PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7, elevated and as a basic user.
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Enable-NTFSAuditInheritance, Disable-NTFSAuditInheritance, and
Set-NTFSInheritance -AuditInheritanceEnabled failed with "(5) Access is
denied" for a file or folder without a SACL, also elevated with the
Security privilege. The cmdlets read only the audit section and changed
the flag that disables or enables audit inheritance. AlphaFS writes that
flag only together with a SACL, so it wrote no section at all, which
Windows denies; the retry as owner repeated the same write. An empty SACL
is now added first, but only to a descriptor that was read with its SACL.
The elevated CI runs of #100 to #106 showed this through the test of an
omitted -AccessInheritanceEnabled. From #104 on, the test that keeps the
inherited entries of a security descriptor failed as well: elevated,
Get-NTFSSecurityDescriptor reads the SACL, and Windows then returns a DACL
that isn't in the auto-inherit format, such as that of a file in the temp
folder of the user, without its inherited flags. The test now reads the
access section only and checks that the descriptor has inherited entries.
Tests: five cases for items without audit entries, red with "Access is
denied" before the fix; the test that keeps the explicit audit entries now
checks the errors and the inheritance state of both calls; a test checks
that a descriptor read without its audit entries gets no SACL, which would
replace the audit entries of the item when it is written.
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Mark the Set-NTFSInheritance change as breaking and warn that scripts that
used it to drop the inherited access entries now leave broader access in
place. Report any failure to create the hash algorithm as
HashAlgorithmNotAvailable, assert that error ID, check that the
MACTripleDES warning appears once, and guard the descriptor test.
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-AccessInheritanceEnabled $false now copies the inherited access entries
into the DACL, and -AuditInheritanceEnabled $true keeps the explicit audit
entries, as Disable-NTFSAccessInheritance and Enable-NTFSAuditInheritance
do without their switches (Decision 13).
BREAKING CHANGE: to remove the entries, use
Disable-NTFSAccessInheritance -RemoveInheritedAccessRules or
Enable-NTFSAuditInheritance -RemoveExplicitAuditRules.
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Disable-NTFSAuditInheritance -RemoveInheritedAccessRules is now
-RemoveInheritedAuditRules, and Enable-NTFSAuditInheritance
-RemoveExplicitAccessRules is now -RemoveExplicitAuditRules. The old names
remain aliases, so existing scripts keep working.
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The cmdlets that take ownership of an item to repeat a denied operation
left the account that ran them as the owner when the second attempt failed
as well. BaseCmdlet.InvokeAsOwner now restores the previous owner on every
exit path and reports a failed restore as RestoreOwnerError.
Add-NTFSAccess, Add-NTFSAudit, Remove-NTFSAccess, and Remove-NTFSAudit
wrote the unchanged entries of an item with -PassThru after a failed
change; they now continue with the next path.
The inheritance tests assert the error identity and cover a missing path
on every runner.
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Defect 20 (#74). Enable-NTFSAccessInheritance,
Disable-NTFSAccessInheritance, Enable-NTFSAuditInheritance,
Disable-NTFSAuditInheritance, and Set-NTFSInheritance wrote the
-PassThru object in a finally block. After a failed change, such as an
audit change without the Security privilege, they returned the unchanged
state, which made the inheritance look disabled; when the item could not
be read at all, reading the state in the finally block threw and stopped
the command. The object is now written only after a successful change.
Tests/Inheritance.Tests.ps1: 5 tests. The audit tests need the missing
privilege and skip in CI; the read-deny tests skip where the Backup
privilege may bypass the deny entry (CI).
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Defect 8. For a security descriptor that was read without its SACL (no
Security privilege), Get-NTFSInheritance -SecurityDescriptor reported
AuditInheritanceEnabled as $true, because the protection flag of a
section that was never read is not set. It now reports $null, like the
Path parameter set, using the sections that FileSystemSecurity2 records
since defect 4.
Set-NTFSInheritance -SecurityDescriptor reads the same state, so it no
longer skips a requested audit change on such a descriptor as "equal".
Tests/Inheritance.Tests.ps1: 2 tests.
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- New-TestSandboxItem creates a uniquely named file or folder in a sandbox
after the path guard, replacing per-file copies.
- Block-TestReadPermission denies OWNER RIGHTS the right to read the
security descriptor of a sandbox item, so that reading it fails without
elevation.
- Remove-TestSandbox no longer stops when icacls cannot reset such an
item: Windows PowerShell turned the icacls message on stderr into a
terminating error; the item is still deleted through its folder.
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Defect 1. Set-NTFSInheritance compared the current state with an unset
Nullable<bool> and then read its value, so omitting
-AccessInheritanceEnabled always failed with "Nullable object must have a
value", and omitting -AuditInheritanceEnabled failed wherever the audit
section is readable. In the SecurityDescriptor set the error was
terminating.
An omitted parameter now leaves its section unchanged. The item, retry,
and security descriptor paths share one implementation instead of three
copies.
Tests/Inheritance.Tests.ps1 (new): 4 tests; the audit case needs the
Security privilege and runs in CI.
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Raimund Andree