Understanding Access Rules

Access rules in ASP.NET define who is authorized to access certain resources or perform certain actions within an application. These rules are enforced by the ASP.NET security system, which uses a combination of authentication and authorization mechanisms to control access.

Authentication refers to the process of verifying the identity of a user. ASP.NET provides various authentication options, including forms-based authentication and Windows authentication. Once a user is authenticated, ASP.NET stores the user’s identity in a security context known as the principal.

Authorization refers to the process of determining whether a user is allowed to perform a particular action or access a particular resource. ASP.NET provides a number of authorization mechanisms, including role-based authorization and resource-based authorization.

Role-based authorization allows you to define roles within your application, such as “admin” or “user”. You can then assign users to one or more roles, and use the [Authorize] attribute to restrict access to certain resources or actions based on the user’s role. For example, you might use the [Authorize(Roles=”admin”)] attribute to restrict access to an administrative section of your application to users in the “admin” role.

Resource-based authorization allows you to define access rules based on the characteristics of the resource being accessed. For example, you might use resource-based authorization to restrict access to certain files or folders based on the user’s identity or other criteria.

In addition to these mechanisms, ASP.NET also provides support for custom authentication and authorization schemes, allowing you to implement your own security logic as needed.

When you click the Manage Access Rules link, and navigate to the Admin folder, you see a table, summarizing the rules.

The table shows that the rule for Administrators is on top, and they are allowed. However, the second and third lines have conflicting lines. The [all] group is denied in the middle row and allowed in the grayed-out bottom row.

The management tool stores the rules you just created in a new web.config file within the Admin folder. It looks like the following code, with the <allow> rule for Administrators taking precedence over the <deny> rule:

<?xml version=”1.0” encoding=”utf-8”?>

<system.web>

</authorization>

</system.web>

</configuration>