I have the following ASP.NET Forms Authentication configuration:
<system.web>
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms name="MembershipCookie"
loginUrl="Login.aspx"
protection="All"
timeout="525600"
slidingExpiration="true"
enableCrossAppRedirects="true"
path="/">
</forms>
</authentication>
<authorization>
<deny users="?" />
</authorization>
</system.web>
<location path="Home.aspx">
<system.web>
<authorization>
<allow users="*" />
</authorization>
</system.web>
</location
If an anonymous user visits the site and requests home.aspx should they be denied access and kicked to the Login.aspx page because the first rule <deny users="?" /> will match and further processing will stop?
The site is running on IIS7.5, ASP.NET 4.0 and the application pool is configured for Integrated Pipeline mode.
Update:
The reason for this question was to sanity check my understanding of ASP.NET 4.0’s Forms Authentication behaviour (which was actually correct). There is a related follow up question which describes what looks like a bug in a hotfix (which is also rolled into Windows 2008R2 SP1) – KB980368:
ASP.NET 2.0 and 4.0 seem to treat the root url differently in Forms Authentication
Answers:
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Method 1
If an user is accessing Home.aspx , it will use the configuration section for Home.aspx specified by <location /> and hence the user will not be kicked out to Login.aspx .
Method 2
If a user access Home.aspx then the second rule will be applied i.e.
<location path="Home.aspx">
<system.web>
<authorization>
<allow users="*" />
</authorization>
</system.web>
</location>
The point to note here is: * tells that any authorized user (having any or no role assigned) could access the page, but ? tells unauthorized user could not access the page.
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