AnonymousPasswordSync

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 metabase property AllowAnonymous 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 Windows 2000, you must have sub-authentication enabled. See "Enabling Sub-Authentication" in IIS Help, which is accessible from IIS Manager.

Important Setting AnonymousPasswordSync on a server running IIS 6.0 has no effect unless you run your application under the System identity and enable sub-authentication. However, it is strongly recommended that you never run an application under the System identity because of the risk it poses to security. If your application contains a buffer-overrun, a malicious user can do anything they want under the guise of the System identity. Also, sub-authentication is not enabled by default on a new installation of IIS 6.0. (See "Enabling Sub-Authentication" in IIS Help, which is accessible from IIS Manager.) 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
StartingNumber	Not applicable
EndingNumber	0
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, please see Code Examples to Configure Metabase Properties

Related Topics

AnonymousUserName
AnonymousUserPass