Some users need to change their username in a secure environment for elevated access. For example, user1 needs root access but is not allowed to login with root. This post show how to do this with WinSCP on an Ubuntu Server.

This response on SuperUser.com is great but is missing an important piece - how to configure your server. In your sudoers file (/etc/sudoers), add this line below the includedir section:

#includedir /etc/sudoers.d
user     ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

Replace user with the desired username for which you need elevated permissions.