PRB: Anonymous User in NT Admin Group Breaks Source Control

 Last reviewed: July 28, 1997
Article ID: Q165831
The information in this article applies to:
  • Microsoft Visual SourceSafe for Windows, version 5.0
  • Microsoft Visual InterDev, version 1.0

SYMPTOMS

Files will appear to be checked out or modified by the system's anonymous user when they are actually checked out to valid SourceSafe accounts.

CAUSE

The machine's Anonymous User account is a member of the Admin user group.

Visual SourceSafe will always attempt to perform actions as the anonymous user before trying to use the actual logged-in user's name. Only when an action exceeds the user rights allowed to the system's anonymous user will it attempt to authenticate as the actual user. Because the anonymous user is a member of the Admin group, it will always have the rights that are required to succeed in checking out files.

Another possible cause is that the anonymous user has either Author and Browse, or Author, Browse, and Administer web permissions.

This can also be caused by using a Windows NT Server that has been formatted with FAT partitions as the Web server because, unlike drives formatted with NTFS, FAT drives have no direct way of securing files based on user id.

RESOLUTION

Remove the anonymous user from the system's Admin group, and make sure that the anonymous account does not have permissions to author or administer the web.

STATUS

This behavior is by design.

MORE INFORMATION

There are no known cases where a default installation would cause this situation. It was first discovered on a machine with manually modified rights.

The anonymous user mentioned here is an account name introduced by Microsoft Internet Information Server. It will have the format IUSR_<machinename>, and can be found in the Internet Service Manager under the properties for the World Wide Web Service.

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

  1. Using the Windows NT User Manager, add the system's anonymous user to the group of Admin users.

  2. Check out a file while logged in as a valid user.

  3. Look in Visual SourceSafe on the server and you will see the files checked out to the anonymous user rather than the valid user. 
Keywords          : ssidev ssint vss kbprb
Technology        : kbInetDev
Version           : 1.0 5.0
Platform          : WINDOWS
Issue type        : kbprb

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Last reviewed: July 28, 1997
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