Why do companies put their DLLs in the Windows system directory?
What will happen when applications written to run on the .NET runtime are common? Will companies insist on putting their assemblies into the GAC? My guess is that they will, although I don't know why for sure.
But what about security. How secure is .NET?. More specifically, how secure are applications written to run on the .NET runtime? Certainly the "binaries" in .NET are easier to disassemble than native machine-code binaries. I'm not the expert here, but I assume that means they are much easier to infect. Assemblies installed in the GAC can only be tampered with by an administrator. Does this mean very many assemblies will be installed into the GAC?
I understand that there is code signing. But it seems to me that a virus writer, if he targets a particular application, could just copy the disassembled code from that application, and then create a replica that is unsigned.
Posted by Doug Sauder at February 6, 2003 05:10 PM