Question

Grant Full Trust to .NET Assemblies in Shared Hosting?

Asked by: edward47150

We recently got the following request from a potential customer who had the following requirements for a .NET website:

    1.      ASP.NET 3.5
    2.      1 SQL Server database (Express is OK)
    3.      Multiple Access databases      
    4.      Ability to grant Full Trust to assemblies, either by adding them to the web server's GAC or by overriding security settings in web.config.

Items 2&3 are not a problem. I believe #1 will be just a matter of installing .NET 3.5.  However, #4 is a concern for me.  I am not really a .NET guy so I don't know the implications of giving "Full Trust" to an assembly.  But any time someone talks about "overriding security settings" I get cautious.

So, could you please help me understand what the implications of granting Full Trust to an assembly is?  Could you also help me to understand if this is an acceptable practice in a shared hosting environement or if it should be avoided.

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Asked On
2009-03-03 at 13:53:54ID24195406
Tags

.NET

,

hosting

Topics

.NET Framework 3.x versions

,

.NET Framework 2.x

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
8

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Answers

 

by: TheLearnedOnePosted on 2009-03-06 at 16:42:02ID: 23822529

ASP.NET by its very nature is partially trusted.  That is a great security model, but adds complexity to configuring the assemblies.  What kind of assemblies are you talking about?

 

by: edward47150Posted on 2009-03-08 at 21:05:54ID: 23833086

TheLearnedOne,

Here is what the guy told me about the assembly:

We have use an open-source .NET based .dll that creates PDFs. It uses GDI+ calls, and one in particular that needs full trust is the Graphics.FromHwnd() call. We have been running this dll on other custom-hosted websites for years and it has never caused a problem. I am familiar with the source code and can vouch for it. If you want, I can provide you portions of the source code. I believe that simply adding this dll to the web server's GAC would be a sufficient way to run it, and that way you could maintain a medium trust execution context for the rest of your websites.

  It sounds legit, but I still have some ideological problems about doing something like this in a shared hosting environment.  If was on a VPS, dedicated, or maybe even a semi-dedicated server, then I wouldn't have a problem at all.  But for a small hosting account, it seems like too much of a risk.  But, I don't really understand this area of .NET very well, so I don't really know how to evaluate it.
 
Your thoughts are welcome.  Thanks.

 

by: TheLearnedOnePosted on 2009-03-09 at 10:25:45ID: 23838147

Considerations:

1) In order to add an assembly to the GAC, it needs to be strong-named.

2) There are Code Access Security configuration wizards that you get when you install the Visual Studio.NET SDK, where you can set the trust level for an assembly.

 

by: edward47150Posted on 2009-06-26 at 22:13:06ID: 24726419

TheLearnedOne,

Sorry I forgot about this post.  What you posted was probably helpful, unfortunately, I don't really understand enough about .NET to make an informed decision.  We ended up not allowing the assembly.

Please award yourself the points, I appreciate the time you took to answer me.

 

by: edward47150Posted on 2009-06-27 at 08:54:03ID: 24728174

TheLearnedOne should get the points, either one of his posts is fine.  Thanks.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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