AnonymousPasswordSync Metabase Property

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

The AnonymousPasswordSync property indicates whether IIS should handle the user password for anonymous users attempting to access resources. The following list details the behavior of this property:

  • If AnonymousPasswordSync is set to false, the administrator must manually set the AnonymousUserPass property to the anonymous user password; otherwise anonymous access will not function properly.

  • If AnonymousPasswordSync is set to true, the anonymous user password is set by IIS.

  • If AnonymousPasswordSync is set to true and the value of the AllowAnonymous Metabase Property is set to false, no users will be permitted to log on to the FTP server.

  • For anonymous password synchronization to work when the domain controller for the IIS server is running Microsoft Windows 2000, you must have subauthentication enabled. For more information, see Configuring Subauthentication in a Windows 2000 Domain.

Important

Setting AnonymousPasswordSync on a server running IIS 6.0 has no effect unless you run your application under the System identity and enable subauthentication. However, it is strongly recommended that you never run an application under the System identity because of the security risk. If your application contains a buffer-overrun, malicious users can do anything they want under the guise of the System identity. Also, subauthentication is not enabled by default on a new installation of IIS 6.0. (See Configuring Subauthentication.) This new default behavior of IIS 6.0 might break old applications that use Anonymous authentication.

Attribute Name Attribute Value

XML Data Type

Boolean

WMI Data Type

Boolean

ADSI Data Type

Boolean

ABO Data Type

Boolean

ABO Metabase Identifier

MD_ANONYMOUS_USE_SUBAUTH

Attributes

INHERIT

Default Value

true

MetaFlagsEx

CACHE_PROPERTY_MODIFIED

User Type

IIS_MD_UT_ FILE

ID

6022

Configurable Locations

You can configure this property at the following locations in the IIS metabase.

Metabase Path IIS Admin Object Type

/LM/W3SVC/n/ROOT /LM/W3SVC/n/ROOT/virtual_directory_name

IIsWebVirtualDir

/LM/W3SVC/n

IIsWebServer

/LM/MSFTPSVC/n

IIsFtpServer

/LM/W3SVC

IIsWebService

/LM/MSFTPSVC

IIsFtpService

/LM/W3SVC/n/ROOT/file_name /LM/W3SVC/n/ROOT/virtual_directory_name/file_name

IIsWebFile

/LM/W3SVC/n/ROOT/physical_directory_name /LM/W3SVC/n/virtual_directory_name/physical_directory_name

IIsWebDirectory

/LM/NNTPSVC

IIsNntpService

/LM/NNTPSVC/n

IIsNntpServer

/LM/SMTPSVC

IIsSmtpService

/LM/SMTPSVC/n

IIsSmtpServer

Code Example

For general code examples, see Code Examples to Configure Metabase Properties.