UnauthorizedAccessException vs SecurityException

Question

The MSDN constructor for a FileStream says that it may throw either an UnauthorizedAccessException or a SecurityException. Here's what MSDN says about these exceptions.

UnauthorizedAccessException: The exception that is thrown when the operating system denies access because of an I/O error or a specific type of security error.

SecurityException: The exception that is thrown when a security error is detected.

How are these two similar exceptions different? What situations will trigger either of them?

Answer 1

A UnauthorizedAccessException is thrown when there is a permissions error accessing the file on disk. That is an error at the operating system level such as a normal user trying to overwrite an operating system file (like kernel32.dll).

A SecurityException is thrown if there is a security violation at the CLR level. For example if you are running as a low access ClickOnce application and attempt to read / write to a place in the file system forbidden by the CLR security settings in the process.