How can I convert from a SID to an account name in C#

Question

I have a C# application that scans a directory and gathers some information. I would like to display the account name for each file. I can do this on the local system by getting the SID for the FileInfo object, and then doing:

string GetNameFromSID( SecurityIdentifier sid )
{
    NTAccount ntAccount = (NTAccount)sid.Translate( typeof( NTAccount ) );
    return ntAccount.ToString();
}

However, this does not work for files on a network, presumably because the Translate() function only works with local user accounts. I thought maybe I could do an LDAP lookup on the SID, so I tried the following:

string GetNameFromSID( SecurityIdentifier sid )
{
    string str = "LDAP://<SID=" + sid.Value + ">";
    DirectoryEntry dirEntry = new DirectoryEntry( str );
    return dirEntry.Name;
}

This seems like it will work, in that the access to "dirEntry.Name" hangs for a few seconds, as if it is going off and querying the network, but then it throws a System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException

Does anyone know how I can get the account name of an arbitrary file or SID? I don't know much about networking or LDAP or anything. There's a class called DirectorySearcher that maybe I'm supposed to use, but it wants a domain name, and I don't know how to get that either - all I have is the path to the directory I'm scanning.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

See here for a good answer:

The best way to resolve display username by SID?

The gist of it is this bit:

string sid="S-1-5-21-789336058-507921405-854245398-9938";
string account = new System.Security.Principal.SecurityIdentifier(sid).Translate(typeof(System.Security.Principal.NTAccount)).ToString();

This approach works for me for non-local SID's over the active directory.