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I was searching on way to prevent an unknown party from attaching their own Plug In containing malicious code into my application. And I ran across this post

.NET Assembly Plugin Security

It suggests to Strong Name the assembly and check it is strong named with the expected key on load.

However, when I look at the MSDN documentation regarding Strong Named Assemblies at this site

Strong-Named Assemblies

There is a Caution that says

Do not rely on strong names for security. They provide a unique identity only.

What does this mean? What security are they referring to, and is this relevant to the answer in the above stack overflow link I provided?

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erotavlas
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1 Answers1

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It's an interesting comment. From what I understand a signed assembly indicates 1) it has been signed with a certain key and 2) is could not have been modified after signing

On point 1, the security of the key is important as anyone with the key could modify and re-sign the assembly.

On point 2, I have seem an example online of a successful modification of an assembly while still passing the strong name verification. It was not trivial.

So technically correct, you can use this to verify identity but not necessarily security - or rather the difference between Authentication (the plugin was signed and not tampered with) versus Authorization (the code itself is authorized to do a certain action).

Authentication versus Authorization

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Blue Toque
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