This rule is deprecated, and will eventually be removed.

The access control of an application must be properly implemented in order to restrict access to resources to authorized entities otherwise this could lead to vulnerabilities:

Granting correct permissions to users, applications, groups or roles and defining required permissions that allow access to a resource is sensitive, must therefore be done with care. For instance, it is obvious that only users with administrator privilege should be authorized to add/remove the administrator permission of another user.

Ask Yourself Whether

There is a risk if you answered yes to any of those questions.

Recommended Secure Coding Practices

At minimum, an access control system should:

Sensitive Code Example

using System.Threading;
using System.Security.Permissions;
using System.Security.Principal;
using System.IdentityModel.Tokens;

class SecurityPrincipalDemo
{
    class MyIdentity : IIdentity // Sensitive, custom IIdentity implementations should be reviewed
    {
        // ...
    }

    class MyPrincipal : IPrincipal // Sensitive, custom IPrincipal implementations should be reviewed
    {
        // ...
    }
    [System.Security.Permissions.PrincipalPermission(SecurityAction.Demand, Role = "Administrators")] // Sensitive. The access restrictions enforced by this attribute should be reviewed.
    static void CheckAdministrator()
    {
        WindowsIdentity MyIdentity = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent(); // Sensitive
        HttpContext.User = ...; // Sensitive: review all reference (set and get) to System.Web HttpContext.User
        AppDomain domain = AppDomain.CurrentDomain;
        domain.SetPrincipalPolicy(PrincipalPolicy.WindowsPrincipal); // Sensitive
        MyIdentity identity = new MyIdentity(); // Sensitive
        MyPrincipal MyPrincipal = new MyPrincipal(MyIdentity); // Sensitive
        Thread.CurrentPrincipal = MyPrincipal; // Sensitive
        domain.SetThreadPrincipal(MyPrincipal); // Sensitive

        // All instantiation of PrincipalPermission should be reviewed.
        PrincipalPermission principalPerm = new PrincipalPermission(null, "Administrators"); // Sensitive
        principalPerm.Demand();

        SecurityTokenHandler handler = ...;
        // Sensitive: this creates an identity.
        ReadOnlyCollection<ClaimsIdentity> identities = handler.ValidateToken(…);
    }

     // Sensitive: review how this function uses the identity and principal.
    void modifyPrincipal(MyIdentity identity, MyPrincipal principal)
    {
        // ...
    }
}

See