Hi All,

There are a lot of assemblies that we create in our projects daily. Have we ever wondered that all those assemblies that we write after putting in such a lot of hard work and effort could be easily used some one else.Also at times you dont want others to use a particular class or a method cause it may retriving some important or confidential information..Net by itself works on the concept of sharing assemblies between applications which enables rapid application development (RAD). We can secure our code by identifying the caller.

Managed code offers several ways to restrict method access:

• Limit the scope of accessibility to the class, assembly, or derived classes, if they can be trusted. This is the simplest way to limit method access. Note that, in general, derived classes can be less trustworthy than the class they derive from, though in some cases they share the parent class's identity. In particular, do not infer trust from the keyword protected, which is not necessarily used in the security context.
• Limit the method access to callers of a specified identity -- essentially, any particular evidence (strong name, publisher, zone, and so on) you choose.
• Limit the method access to callers having whatever permissions you select.

Lets see how can we accomplish this.

1) Create a strong named assembly e.g. Calc.dll. with one class called MyClass having the Add() method which add two numbers.
2) .Net Framework has tool called SecUtil.exe.
3) Go to the Visual Studio command prompt
4) Type SecUtil.exe /? . This will display the help and all the available options.
5) Then type secutil.exe -s -hex -c Calc.dll (or the name of ur dll).
6) This will display the public key as hexadecimal value as shown below.

C:\DotNet\DLLProj\bin\Debug>secutil -hex -c -s Calc.dll
Microsoft (R) .NET Framework SecUtil 1.1.4322.573
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1998-2002. All rights reserved.

Public Key =
0x002400000480000094000000060200000024000052534131 0004000001000100D96FE3B963FC64
B8A9B6CA05B859A67B8B30603A0D696E1F95D8C9B23C5B2EEF 139B96A5CC55C2E38D05B7FD675434
A3EE1EF70C69AE3BDE8E646BF652C006278884856E10D3CD02 73B458A3E8ECAF47BE51FC7619E271
6602B6EFE34824238F1CAF86960691256D0608E317217E174F 4947397A9D5D0BA48785E8CB726E0F
CA
Name =
Calc
Version =
1.0.1761.29820
Success

Now You can use this Public key with any class or method in your assembly that you don't want anyone else to access, you can use the StrongNameIdentityPermissionAttribute for this. Any calling code that isn't signed with your .snk file won't have access to it.

Here I have used it at the class level. You can also achieve the same at method or assembly level.

So,Lets secure our class.


// put this code above the class as shown

[StrongNameIdentityPermissionAttribute(SecurityActi on.Demand,
PublicKey = "0x00240000048000009400000006020000002400005253413 10004000001000100D96FE3B963FC64" +
"B8A9B6CA05B859A67B8B30603A0D696E1F95D8C9B23C5B2EE F139B96A5CC55C2E38D05B7FD675434" +
"A3EE1EF70C69AE3BDE8E646BF652C006278884856E10D3CD0 273B458A3E8ECAF47BE51FC7619E271"+
"6602B6EFE34824238F1CAF86960691256D0608E317217E174 F4947397A9D5D0BA48785E8CB726E0FCA")]
public class MyClass
{
public MyClass()
{
}

public int Add(int i , int j)
{
}
}


7) Now create any Win app which will be a client app for this assembly.
8) Do not srong name this assembly.
9) Reference the above assembly in the cleint App.
10) Call the Add method or any other method of the Myclass.
11) The code will compile.
12) Try and execute the function call . You will a similar error message.

Additional information: Request for the permission of type System.Security.Permissions.StrongNameIdentityPerm ission, mscorlib, Version=1.0.5000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089 failed.