Privileged Code

When you design and build secure assemblies, you must be able to identify privileged code. This has important implications for code access security. Privileged code is managed code that accesses secured resources or performs other security-sensitive operations, such as calling unmanaged code, using serialization, or using reflection. Privileged code is privileged because code access security must grant it specific permissions before it can function.

Privileged Resources

Privileged resources for which your code requires specific code access security permissions are shown in the Table 8.1.

SqlClientPermission

OleDbPermission

OraclePermission

Table 8.1: Secure Resources and Associated Permissions

Secure Resource	Requires Permission
Data access

Note  

The ADO.NET OLE DB and Oracle-managed providers currently require full trust.

Directory services

DirectoryServicesPermission

DNS databases

DnsPermission

Event log

EventLogPermission

Environment variables

EnvironmentPermission

File system

FileIOPermission

Isolated storage

IsolatedStoragePermission

Message queues

MessageQueuePermission

Performance counters

PerformanceCounterPermission

Printers

PrinterPermission

Registry

RegistryPermission

Sockets

SocketPermission

Web services (and other HTTP Internet resources)

WebPermission

Privileged Operations

Privileged operations are shown in Table 8.2, together with the associated permissions that calling code requires.

Table 8.2: Privileged Operations and Associated Permissions

Operation	Requires Permission
Creating and controlling application domains	SecurityPermission with SecurityPermissionFlag.ControlAppDomain
Specifying policy application domains	SecurityPermission with SecurityPermissionFlag.ControlDomainPolicy
Asserting security permissions	SecurityPermission with SecurityPermissionFlag.Assertion
Creating and manipulating evidence	SecurityPermission with SecurityPermissionFlag.ControlEvidence
Creating and manipulating principal objects	SecurityPermission with SecurityPermissionFlag.ControlPrincipal
Configuring types and channels remoting	SecurityPermission with SecurityPermissionFlag.RemotingConfiguration
Manipulating security policy	SecurityPermission with SecurityPermissionFlag.ControlPolicy
Serialization	SecurityPermission with SecurityPermissionFlag.SerializationFormatter
Threading operations	SecurityPermission with SecurityPermissionFlag.ControlThread
Reflection	ReflectionPermission
Calling unmanaged code	SecurityPermission with SecurityPermissionFlag.UnmanagedCode