cat does not always respect Windows permissions

[tropicsquirrel]

Repro steps:

• Ensure coreutils installed (as admin: winget install coreutils)
• Two local user accounts, User A and User B
• User B is a member of the Users group but NOT the Administrators group
• In User A's home dir (e.g. C:\Users\UserA\) create a text file (test.txt) with known contents
• Set permissions to allow all users to read and write the file: BUILTIN\Users:(R,W,D,WDAC,WO,DC)
• From User B's account run type C:\Users\UserA\test.txt
  -- Expected: Access Denied (correct)
• From User B's account run cat C:\Users\UserA\test.txt
  -- Expected: display contents of the file (incorrect)

[yjfvictor]

I don't understand. Why do you think type expects Access Denied while cat expects displaying contents of the file? Shouldn't type and cat be the same?

If you have the read permission to the file, both type and cat should display contents of the file.
If you don't the read permission to the file, both type and cat should be denied from reading the file.

[lhecker]

I concur. While I don't hesitate to believe your repro steps, permissions are not a user-mode feature. If an application can read a file, it should be able to print it.