IIS / Tools / Authentication

Microsoft releases a new download center for IIS (everything in one place)

Chris Crowe — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:36:00 GMT

DownloadCENTER for IIS.net has been released!

The DownloadCENTER at IIS.net, is a community hotspot for discovering, sharing, reviewing and promoting IIS-related solutions in a single place. Dozens of existing downloads, for all versions of IIS – both from Microsoft and the community – are already available in DownloadCENTER today.

This new feature of IIS.net is particularly relevant with the release of IIS7 in Windows Vista. The latest release of Microsoft’s Web server has a completely modular architecture which features over forty pluggable components that can be easily added, removed or even replaced with custom implementations.

This powerful extensibility support is available to both .NET and C/C++ developers. In the future, DownloadCENTER is expected to house a large number of IIS7 extensions submitted by not only the IIS team but the developers and partner ISVs of the IIS community as well.

To learn more about the DownloadCenter, read IIS Product Unit Manager, Bill Staples’ blog post about it or check it out yourself today!

Christchurch .NET Users Group Meeting - June 21st, 2006

Chris Crowe — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:29:00 GMT

I had the pleasure to present to the Christchurch .NET Users Group ( http://www.dot.net.nz ) last evening. It was a very cold night with hail, sleet, rain and we had around 25 people attend.

I spoke about three topics in my presentation:

IIS Scripting
IIS Diagnostic Tools
IIS 7

IIS Scripting

In the talk on IIS Scripting I discussed the different providers that were available to manage IIS from a command line script or application. These include ADSI and WMI, Admin Base Objects and the new IIS 7 Managed Provider.

References:

ADSI Provider
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/iissdk/html/965cc820-753b-4ab7-b1c4-8ab43d67e410.asp
WMI Provider
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/iissdk/html/8b7799c1-cebc-4b11-b3d5-34ab7b728077.asp
Admin Base Objects
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/iissdk/html/6f6a0cfa-4f2b-4641-88c5-2a1767f6fbc8.asp
IIS7 Managed Provider - Microsoft.Web.Administration
http://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=2&subtabid=25&i=952

IIS Diagnostic Tools

In the discussion about IIS diagnostic tools I presented details on the following tools from the Debug Diagnostic Toolkit for IIS.

Authentication and Access Control Diagnostics

Authentication and Access Control Diagnostics (Authdiag) Version 1.0 allows you to review, test, and correct problems with Internet Information Services (IIS) authentication and authorization. You can use Authdiag to check settings on Web sites, FTP sites, virtual directories, Web directories, and files. Authdiag can help you troubleshoot the following types of issues:

SSL Diagnostics

It provides a centralized location to display all relevant SSL configuration information. Most of this information is stored in the metabase, which is the main IIS configuration file. Information related to certificates is also stored in the Windows registry.

SSL Diagnostics checks for the correct configuration of SSL objects and settings. These include client and server certificates, ports, private keys, and Web site states.

Administrators can test whether their current server certificate is working properly by temporarily replacing the current certificate with a self-signed certificate. Administrators are able to test their certificates with a single click of the mouse.

Administrators can use SSL Diagnostics to quickly simulate the connection, or handshake, between the server and browser, and review the response from the server. This is very helpful for determining where in the SSL handshake process the connection is breaking down.

Debug Diagnostics

Debug Diagnostics (DebugDiag) 1.0 is a comprehensive tool designed to help IIS administrators or developers determine why a IIS worker process is crashing, hanging, or memory leak. It offers a simple User Interface to build rules for capturing these common problems with web applications and also offers a built-in analysis system

References:

IIS Debug Diagnostic Tool Kit (6 MB)
http://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=3&subtabid=31&g=5&i=895
Microsoft Log Parser 2.2
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=890cd06b-abf8-4c25-91b2-f8d975cf8c07&displaylang=en
www.logparser.com
Fiddler - HTTP Debugging Proxy Server
www.fiddlertool.com

IIS7

In the IIS 7 section of the presentation I discussed some of the benefits of the new server and its new modular architecture, new UI, new extensibility, and diagnostics functionality.

I showed a number of demos of IIS 7 including a custom Basic Authentication module, a custom Directory Browsing Module, Tracing Features, Debugging a crashing application pool with Debug Diag and some features of the new User Interface.

References

The new official IIS Community Home
www.iis.net
Try IIS7 today in your web browser
http://www.microsoftvirtuallabs.com/iisnet/

My presentation was made on the Beta 2 build of Vista Ultimate and most of the tools worked fine on Vista and IIS 7 even though they are not designed to. As far as I know no body left early - a good sign.... IIS can be a dry topic to developers but I hope they learned something useful about the new product and of course scripting and diagnostics that they may not have known previously.

URL Rewriting and Alternative Authentication Methods

Chris Crowe — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 14:40:00 GMT

Mod_Rewrite - URL Rewrite
Opensource and FREE for private and commercial use
Powered by regular expressions Mod Rewrite adds a flexible URL rewriting engine to your IIS.

With Mod Rewrite you can:

Convert dynamic URLs to static.
Make your site's URLs user and search engine friendly
And much more...

Mod Auth - IIS Authentication
Opensource and FREE for private and commercial use

Add the ability of authorization and authentication without using Windows accounts.
Excelent for membership systems.

ISAPI Filter - [Freeware] IIS password

Chris Crowe [IIS MVP] — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 07:52:00 GMT

IIS password protection of files and folders has always been difficult. IISPassword brings the ease and power of Apache’s htaccess to Microsoft IIS. No longer is there a need for system user accounts and complex access permissions for maintaining a secure, password protected web site.

IISPassword uses Basic HTTP Authentication for password protecting web sites on IIS, just like htaccess works on Apache. That makes your password protected Apache web site compatible with IIS, and vice versa.

A powerful and intuitive interface makes it possible to password protect a web site in just moments. More advanced settings provide options such as user group management and protection of certain file types.

Main Features

Easy installation - IISPassword is installed with an easy setup program.
Easy administration - IISPassword integrates with IIS, creating a new tab in the management console. Protecting a web site is very easy. Select the site or folder to protect, then a username and a password. That’s all there is to it. The advanced mode enables user groups and protection of certain file types.
High performance - IISPassword has been tested in a live environment with heavy traffic, generating practically no extra CPU load on the web servers.
Compatibility with htaccess - IISPassword makes password protected Apache web sites compatible with IIS, and vice versa.
Command line administration - IISPassword can be administrated through a command line interface, allowing automatic administration based on scripts or applications.

Components

ISAPI filter - IISPassword is an ISAPI filter. This makes IISPassword a secure application with low performance costs.
IIS Snap-In - IISPassword is seamlessly integrated into the IIS management console, making password protection an easy task.
Command line tool - IISPassword also provides a command line interface for scripts or applications. This makes it possible to migrate IISPassword into existing control panel systems.

IISPassword is free for private, educational and commercial use.

For more details see:

http://www.troxo.com/products/iispassword/

IIS SSL Diagnostics Version 1.0

Chris Crowe [IIS MVP] — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 06:32:00 GMT

A common problem for administrators of IIS servers is configuring and troubleshooting SSL enabled websites. To assist in administrators efforts, Microsoft has designed a tool - SSL Diagnostics - to aid in quickly identifying configuration problems in the IIS metabase, certificates, or certificate stores.

This tool allows users to review configuration information in a easy to read view mode or to run the tool silently with only the creation of a log file. During use, administrators can simulate the SSL handshake to find errors. They can also quickly "hot swap" certificates for testing purposes.

These packages come in two forms: Express and Full. The express will only give the pertinent tools for administrators to use SSL Diagnostics while full install installs the same files with the appropriate documentation. Included in the full install is a SSL Frequently Asked Questions that can assist in the learning of SSL for administrators.

For more details see - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=CABEA1D0-5A10-41BC-83D4-06C814265282&displaylang=en

IIS Authentication and Access Control Diagnostics 1.0

Chris Crowe [IIS MVP] — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 06:30:00 GMT

Authentication and Access Control Diagnostics 1.0 (more commonly known as AuthDiag) is a tool released by Microsoft aimed at aiding IT professionals and developers at more effectively finding the source of authentication and authorization failures.

These users have often seen behavior from Internet Information Services (IIS) that doesn't seem appropriate or random when users authenticate to the IIS server. The complex world of authentication types and the various levels of security permissions necessary to allow a user to access the server causes many hours of labor for those tasked with troubleshooting these problems.

AuthDiag 1.0 offers a robust tool that offers a efficient method for troubleshooting authentication on IIS 5.x and 6.0. It will analyze metabase configuration and system-wide policies and warn users of possible points of failure and guide them to resolving the problem. AuthDiag 1.0 also includes a robust monitoring tool called AuthMon designed at capturing a snapshot of the problem while it occurs in real-time. AuthMon is robust and specially designed for IIS servers removing any information not pertinent to the authentication or authorization process.

For more details see - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=E90FE777-4A21-4066-BD22-B931F7572E9A&displaylang=en