Elevation service

Please see the documentation in upstream Chromium.

When does this get registered

This Windows-specific service is registered for system level installs. There are two ways a system level install can be done:

• UAC prompt raised during Brave install (ex: person has admin privs) and person clicks Yes to accept escalation.
• Brave installer executable is invoked with --system-level argument in command line which has admin privs.

What is the service used for?

Currently, the elevation service is only used to install the Brave VPN services once the browser detects the product was purchased.

Debugging

The service executable is inside the versioned folder of Brave. It's possible to debug the service interactively by using the following procedure:

1. Open regedit.exe
2. Navigate to [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AppID\{5693E62D-00D6-4421-AFE8-58F3C947436A}] (or if building another channel, check here to find the right AppID).
3. Delete the LocalService value (should be set to something like BraveDevelopmentElevationService) and create a new String value called RunAs with the data value set to Interactive User.
4. Open an admin cmd.exe instance.
5. Navigate to the path where you built the elevation service executable (ex: C:\brave\src\out\Component).
6. Launch the exe via elevation_service.exe --console.
7. After debugging, don't forget to undo step 3.

These steps will let you run a locally compiled version of elevation service. This is very helpful for debugging or tracing the logic there.