Is WindowsPrincipal is Remotable ?

16 Sep 2005 3:19 PM

Karthik

This is regarding passing WindowsPrincipal from my client to the server; Iâ€™m
developing a Windows based application in c#.

When ever I try to pass WindowsPrincipal object from the client to server it
says â€œException ha been throw at target invocationâ€¦â€

Iâ€™m using call context (that class is inherited by ILogicalThreadAffinative)
to pass the object, but still Iâ€™m getting the same error at runtime. Iâ€™m
using Server activated Remoting.

Now Iâ€™m having a list of quires so can any one please look into them?

Questions

1. How to pass WindowsPrincipal across layers?

2. Presently my server is hosted on console application(the listener) if I
change this as Windows service does my security logic (passing windows
principal object and validating into the BL ) or any other code needs to be
changed or it wonâ€™t be a problem

3. Instead of using WindowsPrincipal If I use GenericIdentity with
GenericPrincipal Iâ€™m able to pass across layer so, can I use this method for
my security check. Iâ€™m creating the GenericIdentity by getting the
WindowsIdentityâ€™s Name as argument to GenericIdentity.

Even if it is Ok I wanted to know why Iâ€™m not able to pass WindowsPrincipal
object to my BL.

4. What is the behavior of my Server Class if I decorate it with
[Serializable] as well as inherited by MarshalByRefObject.?

5. Is there any correlation between [Serializable], MarshalByRefObject
and Client Activated, Server Activated type of Remoting?

16 Sep 2005 4:28 PM

Dominick Baier [DevelopMentor]

Hello Karthik,

no it isn't - WindowsPrincipal ultimately encapsulates a Windows token, which
only makes sense on the machine where it was created.

i guess you are using remoting - the security story of remoting is, well,
non existent. Remoting has no authentication, authorization, message security
etc...

You can get most features by hosting in IIS

- enable integrated authentication (identity is available on the server under
Thread.CurrentPrincipal)
- enable SSL for wire security (otherwise i can easily change you remoting
calls on the fly)

While this all works for servers (well with a little help of IIS) -there
is NO builtin way to secure clients. So if you are doing callbacks from the
server, the client opens a port and takes connections from the world...

---------------------------------------
Dominick Baier - DevelopMentor
http://www.leastprivilege.com

Show quoteHide quote

> This is regarding passing WindowsPrincipal from my client to the
> server; I'm developing a Windows based application in c#.
>
> When ever I try to pass WindowsPrincipal object from the client to
> server it says "Exception ha been throw at target invocation."
>
> I'm using call context (that class is inherited by
> ILogicalThreadAffinative) to pass the object, but still I'm getting
> the same error at runtime. I'm using Server activated Remoting.
>
> Now I'm having a list of quires so can any one please look into them?
>
> Questions
>
> 1. How to pass WindowsPrincipal across layers?
>
> 2. Presently my server is hosted on console application(the listener)
> if I change this as Windows service does my security logic (passing
> windows principal object and validating into the BL ) or any other
> code needs to be changed or it won't be a problem
>
> 3. Instead of using WindowsPrincipal If I use GenericIdentity with
> GenericPrincipal I'm able to pass across layer so, can I use this
> method for my security check. I'm creating the GenericIdentity by
> getting the WindowsIdentity's Name as argument to GenericIdentity.
>
> Even if it is Ok I wanted to know why I'm not able to pass
> WindowsPrincipal object to my BL.
>
> 4. What is the behavior of my Server Class if I decorate it with
> [Serializable] as well as inherited by MarshalByRefObject.?
>
> 5. Is there any correlation between [Serializable],
> MarshalByRefObject and Client Activated, Server Activated type of
> Remoting?
>

17 Sep 2005 10:15 AM

Klaus Holster

Hello Karthik,

adding to Dominik's post, here's a link talking about securing a Remoting
application with .NET 1.1:

http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel9.RemotingSecurityGuidelines

..NET 2.0 adds a number of security related features to Remoting:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/transcripts/20050120NETMTTranscript.aspx

Hth,

Klaus

"Karthik" schrieb:

Show quoteHide quote

> This is regarding passing WindowsPrincipal from my client to the server; Iâ€™m
> developing a Windows based application in c#.
>
> When ever I try to pass WindowsPrincipal object from the client to server it
> says â€œException ha been throw at target invocationâ€¦â€
>
> Iâ€™m using call context (that class is inherited by ILogicalThreadAffinative)
> to pass the object, but still Iâ€™m getting the same error at runtime. Iâ€™m
> using Server activated Remoting.
>
> Now Iâ€™m having a list of quires so can any one please look into them?
>
> Questions
>
> 1. How to pass WindowsPrincipal across layers?
>
> 2. Presently my server is hosted on console application(the listener) if I
> change this as Windows service does my security logic (passing windows
> principal object and validating into the BL ) or any other code needs to be
> changed or it wonâ€™t be a problem
>
> 3. Instead of using WindowsPrincipal If I use GenericIdentity with
> GenericPrincipal Iâ€™m able to pass across layer so, can I use this method for
> my security check. Iâ€™m creating the GenericIdentity by getting the
> WindowsIdentityâ€™s Name as argument to GenericIdentity.
>
> Even if it is Ok I wanted to know why Iâ€™m not able to pass WindowsPrincipal
> object to my BL.
>
> 4. What is the behavior of my Server Class if I decorate it with
> [Serializable] as well as inherited by MarshalByRefObject.?
>
> 5. Is there any correlation between [Serializable], MarshalByRefObject
> and Client Activated, Server Activated type of Remoting?
>
>