Looking into Access Masks

In this monologue podcast, Pavel Yosifovich explains Access Masks in Windows, which are 32-bit values representing access rights for objects, found in handles and Access Control Entries (ACEs) within Access Control Lists (ACLs). He demonstrates how to view Access Masks using tools like Process Explorer and kernel debuggers, showing how they define what a user can do with an object. The discussion covers specific and standard rights, generic access rights (read, write, execute, all), and how these translate to specific rights depending on the object type, recommending explicit access specifications for programming to avoid requesting more permissions than necessary.