bin-deploying DLLs banned in leiu of GAC on shared IIS 6 servers

Posted by craigmoliver on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by craigmoliver
Published on 2010-05-08T20:03:30Z Indexed on 2010/05/08 20:08 UTC
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I need to solicit feedback about a recent security policy change at an organization I work with. They have recently banned the bin-deployment of DLLs to shared IIS 6 application servers. These servers host many isolated web application pools. The new rules require all DLLs to be installed in GAC.

The is a problem for me because I bin-deploy several dlls including the ASP.NET MVC Framework, HTML Agility Pack, ELMAH, and my own shared class libraries. I do this because:

  • Eliminates web application server dependencies to the Global Assembly Cache.
  • Allows me (the developer) to have control of what goes on inside my application.
  • Enables the application to deployed as a "package".
  • Removes application deployment burden from the server administrators.

Now, here are my questions.

  • From a security perspective what are the advantages to using the GAC vs. bin-deployment?
  • Is it possible to host multiple versions of the same DLL in the GAC?
  • Has anyone run into similar restrictions?

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