Loading the Security Provider DLL

In order to initialize security, we need to "load" the provider. In all our discussions it will be assumed that the client side of the provider is a DLL..

The provider is loaded using a call to the LoadLibrary function, shown in the example below:

void    *    DllHandle;
//loading NTLM SSP
DllHandle = (void *)LoadLibrary(TEXT("security.dll");
if(!DllHandle)
{
    // 
    // DLL did not get loaded.
    //
    Status = GetLastError();
    return Status;
}
//
// DllHandle is valid
//

In Windows NT, a single system DLL implements the security support provider. This provider supports all available security packages available on the system. The name of the Windows NT security provider DLL is security.dll. After loading the Windows NT security provider, multiple security packages are available, including:

• NTLM
• MSN
• Schannel (SSL/ Private Communications Technology [PCT])
• Kerberos (in Windows NT 5.0)

In Windows 95, the security provider DLL name is secur32.dll. The differences in provider DLL file names are due to the organization of the system root directory on Windows 95. All security packages for Windows 95 are available through this provider.

The Kerberos security package is not currently available for Windows 95, but will be made available in a future update for that environment.