Dan Sellers's WebLog

Today is my last day at Microsoft. I wanted to thank everyone for joining me in my Security talks over the last few years. There will no longer be any entries at this blog, but please visit the Security Four Canadian Developers blog as this blog will...

I would recommend that you share this post on the http://blogs.msdn.com/S4CD with anyone that automatically cite resources as an excuse for not writing secure code. This is an extremely well documented example of how a small team can developer secure...

The ASP.NET User Principal (HTTPContext.User) clearly depends upon the Authentication Mechanism that you selected in IIS 6.0 "Authenication Tab" and if you use Integrated Windows Authentication then it is dependant on the IIS impersonation token that...

The one area that many developers do not have good grasp at is how Authentication tokens from IIS 6.0 is passed to ASP.NET 2.0 and how these tokens can subsequently be used for Authorization in an ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application. The one question that...

Wow, it has been a while since I did my last blog post. It may look like I disappeared but I am still around and was just keeping a low profile for the summer months. Based upon your feedback I have recently created a new blog, but this time, the blog...

With the ever increasing regulatory requirements for organizations, many of the applications we write may need to meet certain compliances. Here is an interesting read for developers: Regulatory Compliance Demystified: An Introduction to Compliance...

The on-demand Webcast of SQL Server 2005 for Developers, conducted on March 22, 2006, by Rob Walters--Program Manager, SQL Server Security-- and I, is now available for on-demand viewing . Post Notes from this Webcast can be found at my blog . Look...

At MIX06 , it was announced that the "Atlas" March CTP is now available and it has a Go Live license so you can take applications into production. The atlas team also re-launched the http://atlas.asp.net/ with a new "Atlas" enabled experience, customer...

In my latest Webcast on SQL Server 2005 Security one of the questions that came up was: “If some fields of your table are encrypted and you are suspicious that the key has been revealed can you re-encrypt all the fields with the regenerated key...

This morning was a jammed filled session covering off a lot of changes made to Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Over the last few weeks we talk exclusively about Front End security issues such as Input trust and the creation of a Development and Design environment...

Earlier this week, MSDN Canada announced the realDEVELOPMENT_06 tour. realDEVELOPMENT_06 will feature two sets of sessions; one entitled, "Web Platform" and the other entitled, "Security on the Brain". The Web Platform Sessions will feature talks on...

Recently, Microsoft released the latest update to Anti-Cross Site Scripting tool which is part of a bigger plan known as the Microsoft IOSEC—an internal library. The IOSEC library currently implements encoding protection against XSS attacks conducted...

The on-demand version of the Visual Studio 2005 and Code Scanning Tools, conducted on March 15, 2006,by Kevin Lam and I, is now available for on-demand viewing . Look forward to seeing everyone for next week webcast .

You may not have heard it here first, but Rick LaPlante announced today, at SDWest 2006, that Microsoft is releasing Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server tomorrow—March 17, 2006. This was reported in Rob Carron’s blog . Team Foundation Server should...

The Beta Experience is the new testing platform with tailor-made information for Microsoft developers. By registering to the Beta Experience you will be provided with the opportunity to download or order the latest Beta versions of Microsoft software...

This year I will be speaking at VSLive in Toronto . VSLive will be held at the Toronto Congress Centre from April 24-27, 2006. I will be doing one of my favorite talks on the last day of the event titled: " Developing Advanced Custom Providers for ASP...

In today’s webcast we had the opportunity to explore the buffer overrun attack in depth which is considered one of the worst vulnerabilities that exist. Any code that is written in C or C++ --without proper security code reviews--on any platform is susceptible...

Back in December 2005 Microsoft created a series on the top ten things to do to make your Applications a Vista Application. The original article can be seen here ! Since then there has been additional articles with the latest one being released this month...

After last week WebCast --in which I talked about the new System.Security.SecureString class as well as the cool SecurePasswordTextBox that Paul Glavs wrote--he experienced an sudden increase in downloads. You can read about it here ! Recently, Paul...

To minimize the threat of Cross Site scripting attacks ASP.NET 1.1 introduced the ValidateRequest="true" on the @ Pages element. Recently, Microsoft improved the HttpUtility.HtmlEncode with the new Anti-XSS tool . But another subtle and equally important...

In my last Webcast on Least Privilege I eluded to the fact that this was going to change with the release of Windows Vista. In fact it is going to change significantly. Here is a white paper that provides an understanding of User Account Protection...

I thought I would share Michael Howard's recent blog on " Security Analogies are Wrong ". I agree with Michael take on Security Analogies as I hear them all the time but I thought his post was hilarous as he turns the tables with his counter analogy:...

The latest Webcast "Least Privilege Development and New System.Security Features" which is part two of a five part series on examining the new security features and tools incorporated in Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0 is now ready for on-demand...

Today Microsoft released Beta 2 of the second version of the Threat Modeling and Analysis Tool for download . Microsoft has been using the Threat Modeling methodology as part of our Security Development Lifecycle for a few years now. Threat Modeling...

The answer to the trivial question from my blog based upon the March 8, 2006 WebCasts “Least Privilege Development and New System.Security Features” is below: Question: The KeyInfo element can consist of either a <KeyName/> or a <RetrievalMethod...