Testing .NET code in partial trust environments

Question

I want to test the behavior of a certain piece of .NET code in partial trust environments. What's the fastest way to set this up? Feel free to assume that I (and other readers) are total CAS noobs.

@Nick: Thanks for the reply. Alas, the tool in question is explicitly for unmanaged code. I didn't say "managed" in my question, and should not have assumed that people would infer it from the ".NET" tag.

Answer 1

This is an excellent question, especially from a TDD point of view and validating code under different trust scenarios.

I think the way I'd approach this would be something along the lines of -

• Create an AppDomain in my TDD code using the AppDomain.CreateDomain() overload that allows you to pass in a PermissionSet. The PermissionSet would be constructed to match the different trust scenarios you'd want to test against.

• Load the assembly containing logic under test into the app domain

• Create instances of types/call methods etc in app domain, trap security exceptions

Something kinda like that. I've not had time to knock up a proof of concept yet.

Answer 2

The functionality you're looking for is built-in into visual studio :

On the security tab of your project, there's an "Advanced ..." button which let you configure whether you want to debug in full trust, or on a specified trust level.

Answer 3

Use the Microsoft Application Verifier.

AppVerifier helps to determine:

• When the application is using APIs correctly: (Unsafe TerminateThread APIs., Correct use of Thread Local Storage (TLS) APIs., o Correct use of virtual space manipulations (for example, VirtualAlloc, MapViewOfFile).
• Whether the application is hiding access violations using structured exception handling.
• Whether the application is attempting to use invalid handles.
• Whether there are memory corruptions or issues in the heap.
• Whether the application runs out of memory under low resources.
• Whether the correct usage of critical sections is occurring.
• Whether an application running in an administrative environment will run well in an environment with less privilege.
• Whether there are potential problems when the application is running as a limited user.
• Whether there are uninitialized variables in future function calls in a thread's context.