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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-15T14:06:24+00:00

I have a secure WCF service with custom authentication. When I am stress testing

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I have a secure WCF service with custom authentication. When I am stress testing it – having a few dozens of clients connect at the same time, I often get the following exception in my server-side logs:

System.ServiceModel.FaultException: Access is denied.
   at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.AuthorizationBehavior.Authorize(MessageRpc& rpc)
   at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage1(MessageRpc& rpc)
   at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.MessageRpc.Process(Boolean isOperationContextSet)

I’ve enabled tracing through System.Diagnostics but that only got me a longer stack trace:

System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.AuthorizationBehavior.Authorize(MessageRpc& rpc)
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage1(MessageRpc& rpc)
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.MessageRpc.Process(Boolean isOperationContextSet)
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ChannelHandler.DispatchAndReleasePump(RequestContext request, Boolean cleanThread, OperationContext currentOperationContext)
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ChannelHandler.HandleRequest(RequestContext request, OperationContext currentOperationContext)
System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ChannelHandler.AsyncMessagePump(IAsyncResult result)
System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.WorkItem.Invoke2()
System.Security.SecurityContext.Run(SecurityContext securityContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)
System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.WorkItem.Invoke()
System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.ProcessCallbacks()
System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.CompletionCallback(Object state)
System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.ScheduledOverlapped.IOCallback(UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes, NativeOverlapped* nativeOverlapped)
System.ServiceModel.Diagnostics.Utility.IOCompletionThunk.UnhandledExceptionFrame(UInt32 error, UInt32 bytesRead, NativeOverlapped* nativeOverlapped)
System.Threading._IOCompletionCallback.PerformIOCompletionCallback

Why is this happening and how can I find out more about what’s going wrong here?

Thanks,
urig

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    From “custom authentication” and “[when] a few dozens of clients connect at the same time” I would guess that your custom authentication (from the stack trace: the authorization part) is not fully thread-safe. It could be that any error in the authorization part is (mis-)diagnosed as an “Access denied” error.

    There might be some more information in the InnerException properties. But otherwise, maybe you can post some details of your own authorization code.

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