Shawn Farkas: CLR 4 - Inside the new Managed Security Model

Posted By: Charles | May 27th @ 12:10 PM | 45,342 Views | 10 Comments
Senior SDE Shawn Farkas digs into the new security model in CLR 4. Gone are the days of head scratching complexity when it comes to reasoning about security in the managed world. The main goal for CLR 4 security was simplicity, in design and implementation for consumers (developers) of both security policy and secure design at the code level (both of these have been traditionally overly complex with a side effect of enabling insecurity rather than preventing it).

Shawn has been working on security inside the CLR (which of course manifests itself in the managed code and libraries you use to build your applications and services). He and team have been very, very busy over the past few years essentially rearchitecting the core security model of the CLR. What, exactly, have they done? Given the somewhat drastic changes, how does this impact compatibility (especially for those applications that took the leap and built complex CAS and policies into their applications)?

There's a lot of very useful information in this conversation with plenty of whiteboarding. It's great to see the managed security model evolve into a much more simple expressive model with policy patterns that mere mortals can understand and reason about. Great job Shawn and team! Thank you.

Tune in. Meet one of the minds behind CLR 4's security model.

Enjoy
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#May 27th @ 12:42 PM
exoteric
exoteric
I : Next<I>

Lovely informational. I remember having used CAS and scratching my head a few times. The new model looks much simpler.

#May 27th @ 1:24 PM
cdwatkins
cdwatkins

Thank God!  Well done guys!  As someone that has been working with the silverlight security model for some time now, I have to say its a hell of a lot easier to understand and work with.  Glad to see that getting back into the core clr.

#May 28th @ 3:49 AM
Simo
Simo
With me it's a full-time job.

"There's a lot of very useful information in this conversation with plenty of whiteboarding."

I read that sentence as "... with plenty of water-boarding." Sheesh, sign of the times.

#May 28th @ 4:32 AM
stevo_
stevo_
Human after all

Personally the security model in .NET has mostly gone over my head.. I think its because in asp.net (where I spend most of my time), you get along perfectly fine without needing to understand it.. the only security concepts I really understand in asp.net world is trust levels (configured permission sets?) because most shared hosting implies medium trust and thus you need to be aware of operations that require full trust (and in some cases different hosts have 'variants' of medium trust, where permissions are stricter).

Edit: forgot to comment about the video, which was great- the silverlight security model is easy to understand (although I'm not entirely sure what that competes with).

#May 28th @ 8:52 AM
aL_
aL_
Rx ftw

so no more caspol? :O i *hate* caspol Smiley

#May 28th @ 9:42 AM
Sampy
Sampy
This will be the sixth time we have destroyed it and we have become exceedingly efficient at it

Hey, we interned at the same time and started here in the same year!

I thought he looked familiar...

#May 28th @ 12:03 PM
Shawn Farkas
Shawn Farkas

I don't think we interned together, but we did work on ClickOnce together back in the .NET 2.0 / VS 2005 days Smiley

#May 28th @ 12:52 PM
Shawn Farkas
Shawn Farkas

Yep - since we're not applying CAS policy to apps that you just run as .exes by default anymore, there won't be any need to play with caspol to get those working.

-Shawn

#May 29th @ 2:09 AM
aL_
aL_
Rx ftw

i love you [and your team] Smiley

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