.NET Framework Security

Entering a New Paradigm: Code-Identity–Based Security

User-identity–based security systems have been very successful in regulating access to resources, such as the files and folders maintained by the operating system, or to a database in Microsoft SQL Server. However, there is a fundamental drawback to user-identity–based security—by design, it operates at the granularity of user identity. All code running on behalf of a user is executed with the same access rights. This does not allow for trust distinctions between code itself. You may wonder why this is necessary. Certainly in the past, when desktop machines were not interconnected to each other or to the Internet and all software needed an explicit install action on behalf of the user, it ...