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Asked: 2026-05-11T02:05:54+00:00

Working inside the context of an ASP.NET application I am creating a page that

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Working inside the context of an ASP.NET application I am creating a page that will be able to execute database scripts against one of many databases in our environment. To do this we need to prompt the user for a username/password combination, this value can be used for all servers without issue.

The question is where is the most secure location to store this information? We need to store it temporarily as when they are on this specific page they could be executing hundreds of scripts, over multiple postbacks. From what I can tell I have 3 options and I’m not sure what is the best. Below is my take on the options, what is the recommendation of everyone here? What is the most secure, while still being friendly for the user?

Store Information In Viewstate

One of the first ideas we discussed was storing the information after being supplied by the user in the ViewState for the page. This is helpful as the information will only exist for the lifetime of the page, however, we are unsure of the security implications.

Store information in Session

The next idea we had was to store it in session, however, the downside to this is that the information can be made available to other pages inside the application, and the information always lingers in memory on the server.

Store Information in Application

The last idea that we had was to store it in the Application cache, with a user specific key and a sliding 5 minute expiration. This would still be available to other pages, however, it would ensure that the information is cached for a shorter period.

Why?

The final question that is important is ‘Why are you doing this?’. Why don’t we just use their Lan id’s? Well we cannot use lan id’s due to the lack of network support for delegation.

S0 what is the recommended solution? Why? How secure is it, and can we be?

Update

Great information has been discussed. TO clarify, we are running in an intranet environment, we CANNOT use Impersonation or Delegation due to limitations in the network.

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1 Answer

  1. In my opinion the natural place for this is the Session.

    I’m not sure why you seem to be fearing ‘other pages inside the application’ (you control the appliciation, don’t you?), but if you really are, you could use some sort of encryption before you store it.

    But if you are going to do that, the data could live in the ViewState as well.

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