"Marlow" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:0538D328-ABC3-4099-AFA1-07F79374B944@microsoft.com...
>I am writing a .NET web application that provides secure access to
> images and files. Basically files/images will be uploaded to the
> website (storage method to be determined) by a given user and then
> access to the file will be restriced to other specific users based
> upon some permissions that are stored in join tables against the file
> meta data records.
>
> Currently I am storing the files in the file system with a pointer to
> the folder the files reside in. Each folder has a unique hashed name.
>
> The problem is that the files are all accessible to anyone if a user
> is able to "guess" or otherwise determine the appropriate URL to
> retrieve the file. Obviously this is not appropriate for information
> that must be secure.
>
> To resolve this problem I have thought of two methods:
> 1) Store the files in the SQL Database, and have an aspx page the
> retrieves the files and checks certain security credentials and the
> binarywrites the file to response, or
> 2) Move the files out of the accessible web published folders, to
> another area of the file system, then write a page that checks the
> security credentials opens a filestream to the file and writes it into
> the Response object (if this is even feasible?).
>
> There are potentially very large files to be uploaded and upwards of
> 30,000 files. I am aware of the data paging in storing files larger
> than 8K in SQL. Also there will be several different instances of the
> application and database running for different clients but on the same
> servers.
>
> Alot of the files will be images that are referenced through a
> provided DHTML control, many of which will appear on a public website
> and will be accessed very frequently. Which of the above methods would
> provide (in your opinion of course!) the best combination of Security
> and Performance?
>
> An example would be that a given file is available from a specific
> online date, until a specific offline date. It must be such that after
> that date the file can no longer be accessed even if the user has the
> URL directly through to the specific file. (Currently the HTML content
> that links to the files is taken offline, but not the files
> themselves.)
>
> Any input appreciated, thanks in advance.
>