Disable Windows Firewall Without Admin Rights

Question

I need to disable the Windows 8.1 firewall but I don't have administrative rights. How can this be done?

Answer 1

This is not possible in the default configuration. Windows Firewall requires elevated permissions to reconfigure its settings. The MMC snap-in shows an "access denied" error, while the control panel version won't let you do anything interesting without elevating first. Starting, stopping, or reconfiguring the Windows Firewall service also requires administrator permissions. This makes sense: since the firewall settings affect everyone on the machine, unprivileged users should not be able to mess with them and thereby affect people other than themselves.

Please see your administrator and ask them to make the change you need. If you have physical access to the computer, you can see What can I do if I forgot my Windows password? to reset a given account's password, but please keep in mind that making unauthorized changes to computers is inadvisable personally even if possible technically. I recommend doing that only if you are rightfully the administrator but have lost your password.

Answer 2

To qualify the "it can't be done":

It could maybe be done by using some local privilege escalation vulnerability (either by exploiting the fact the system is behind on patches, or using something new that hasn't been fixed yet), and using the privileges thus attained.

This IS targeting the system with malware. This IS cracking. Doing that to any system of which you are not either the owner or the legit system administrator will very likely be viewed as a malicious and criminal act if discovered.

If this is a corporate computer, any other "unexpected" method is likely to land you in similar hot water - even if the responsible system manager did not explicitly set that policy, they are expecting the default policy they know to be valid and effective.