elmah remote access security

You can secure ELMAH’s display or feeds in two ways:

• Enabling or disabling remote access
• Granting or denying access via ASP.NET authorization

Full Answer

How do I allow remote access to ELMAH?

The security element located beneath the elmah element provides a single attribute named allowRemoteAccess: As default, remote access to /elmah.axd isn't allowed meaning that requesting that URL on everything else than localhost, returns af HTTP status code 403.

How can ELMAH help me?

With elmah.io, we store all of your log messages, notify you through popular channels like email, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, and help you fix errors fast.

Can I use my existing database for ELMAH?

We recommend using a separate database for ELMAH, but you can use your existing database if you like. ELMAH requires some tables and stored procedures to be created on the configured database. The scripts for ELMAH 1.2 can be found here: ELMAH v1.2 MS Sql Server DB script.

What is Elmah Axd?

Description. ELMAH (Error Logging Modules and Handlers) is an application-wide error logging facility that is completely pluggable. It can be dynamically added to a running ASP.NET web application, or even all ASP.NET web applications on a machine, without any need for re-compilation or re-deployment.

What is Elmah logging?

ELMAH is a free, open source error logging library that includes features like error filtering and the ability to view the error log from a web page, as an RSS feed, or to download it as a comma-delimited file.

How do you use Elmah?

How to use ELMAH?Create a new MVC application. On the File menu, click New >> Project. ... Install ELMAH Library and register its modules. Open NuGet Package Manager Console - ... Setup Mail Server for getting every log in email; add the below code in web. config. ... Store ELMAH logs on different locations.

How do you check Elmah?

Build the application, run it in the browser, and navigate to http://www.yoursite.com/elmah.axd. You are prompted to log in before you see the content. After a successful authentication, you see a web page to remotely view the entire log of recorded exceptions.

What does Elmah stand for?

ELMAH stands for Error Logging Modules and Handlers for ASP.NET and is the original and very successful open source project for logging errors from . NET web applications.

Is elmah.io free?

Absolutely! Everyone can try elmah.io completely free for 21 days, no credit card required.

How do I enable Elmah?

To turn on ELMAH, navigate to Administration » Settings » Advanced » System » UI Elmah Config. Select the IsElmahLoggingTurnedOn checkbox and click Save changes. Every time you change the selection of this checkbox, you must restart the application.

How do I add Elmah to Web API?

public static class WebApiConfig { public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config) { ... config. Services. Add(typeof(IExceptionLogger), new ElmahExceptionLogger()); ... } }...Further Reading :Elmah on code.google.com.Elmah. MVC 2.0. 2 on Nuget.Elmah. MVC on GitHub.

The Security Element

The security element located beneath the elmah element provides a single attribute named allowRemoteAccess:

Access Through ASP.NET Authorization

So, if the default setting is not able to access /elmah.axd, how do you browse your error logs? Well, in fact, combining remote access with ASP.NET authorization rules is your friend. When installing ELMAH, configuration for the elmah.axd URL where added to your web.config file:

What About ASP.NET MVC?

ELMAH was originally created for ASP.NET. Different features available in ASP.NET MVC have been causing a lot of head-scratching since it was introduced back in 2007. Some of you may have struggled with MVC's HandleErrorAttribute, as well as getting custom errors and ELMAH working at the same time.

Would Your Users Appreciate Fewer Errors?

elmah.io is the easy error logging and uptime monitoring service for .NET. Take back control of your errors with support for all .NET web and logging frameworks.

What is ELMAH configuration?

ELMAH provides a configuration section and a setting to enable or disable remote access to the error log display and feeds. When disabled (the default), only local access to the error log display and feeds is allowed. The snippet below shows how to enable remote access:

When is remote access enabled?

Remote access is enabled when the value of the allowRemoteAccessattribute is either 1, yes, trueor on. Otherwise it is disabled. Local access is always available. Have expected configuration sections declared. Make sure you have declared the expected configuration sections in order to apply the above configuration.

Can you enable remote access in ASP.NET?

If you must enable remote access, it is paramount that you also secure access to only authorized users. You can do this using ASP.NET’s built-in authorization mechanism .

Do handler registrations need to be moved under the location tag?

The handler registrations need to be moved under the location tag. Having them outside does not secure access sufficiently.

Where is ELMAH configuration?

ELMAH looks for its configuration options in the website's Web.config file in a custom configuration section named <elmah>. In order to use a custom section in Web.config it must first be defined in the <configSections> element. Open the Web.config file and add the following markup to the <configSections>:

What is elmah.dll?

While the Elmah.dll file contains the HTTP Modules and Handler needed to automatically log unhandled exceptions and to display error details from a web page , these must be explicitly registered in the web application's configuration. The ErrorLogModule HTTP Module, once registered, subscribes to the HttpApplication 's Error event. Whenever this event is raised the ErrorLogModule logs the details of the exception to a specified log source. We'll see how to define the log source provider in the next section, "Configuring ELMAH." The ErrorLogPageFactory HTTP Handler factory is responsible for generating the markup when viewing the error log from a web page.

What is ELMAH in production?

Error Logging Modules And Handlers (ELMAH) offers another approach to logging runtime errors in a production environment. ELMAH is a free, open source error logging library that includes features like error filtering and the ability to view the error log from a web page, as an RSS feed, or to download it as a comma-delimited file. This tutorial walks through downloading and configuring ELMAH.

What is ELMAH 1.0 beta 3?

ELMAH 1.0 BETA 3 (Build 10617), the most recent version at the time of writing, is included in the download available with this tutorial. Alternatively, you may visit the ELMAH website to get the most recent version or to download the source code. Extract the ELMAH download to a folder on your desktop and locate the ELMAH assembly file ( Elmah.dll ).

How long does it take to integrate Elmah?

Integrating ELMAH into a new or existing ASP.NET application is an easy and straightforward process that takes under five minutes. In a nutshell, it involves four simple steps:

How to add elmah.dll to Visual Studio?

Next, open Visual Studio and add the assembly to your project by right-clicking on the website name in the Solution Explorer and choosing Add Reference from the context menu. This brings up the Add Reference dialog box. Navigate to the Browse tab and choose the Elmah.dll file. This action adds the Elmah.dll file to the web application's Bin folder.

Where are HTTP modules and handlers registered?

The specific syntax for registering HTTP Modules and Handlers depends upon the web server that is powering the site. For the ASP.NET Development Server and Microsoft's IIS version 6.0 and earlier, HTTP Modules and Handlers are registered in the <httpModules> and <httpHandlers> sections, which appear within the <system.web> element. If you are using IIS 7.0 then they need to be registered in the <system.webServer> element's <modules> and <handlers> sections. Fortunately, you can define the HTTP Modules and Handlers in both places regardless of the web server being used. This option is the most portable one as it allows the same configuration to be used in the development and production environments regardless of the web server being used.

Introduction

ELMAH is an open source, plug-&-play solution for logging and reporting unhandled errors in ASP.NET web applications. By deploying it to GAC (global assembly cache) and configuring at server level (machine.config or root web.config), you can achieve zero footprints at application level.

Inadequate security in ELMAH

ELMAH's built-in security can only turn remote access on/off. In other words, it uses server accessibility as a security defense. This is inadequate because the persons who want to use ELMAH may or may not have server access.

Solution part I: HTTP authentication

First of all, in order to authenticate and authorize an ELMAH request, we have to know who is making the request. As explained above, we are not able to use ASP.NET authentication mechanisms (i.e. Windows or form authentication), since they may be different from application to application. We will resort to HTTP authentication.

Summary

Combining the convenience of zero-footprint plug-&-play with the security of an independent authentication and authorization mechanism, ELMAH is enterprise-ready.

What is elmah in NET?

ELMAH is basically a NuGet package for .NET web applications, logging every exception occurring on one or more websites to some storage of your choosing. Unlike other logging frameworks ELMAH will, when configured in its most simple form, log every exception automatically.

How to secure elmah.axd?

To secure access to elmah.axd, ELMAH supports authorization through the authorization feature in ASP.NET. To allow only a single role to access elmah.axd, locate the configuration section for elmah.axd and deny all users except users with the admin role (role name may vary from your setup):

How many error logs can you have in Elmah?

In line 2 a new element has been added. Every error logger in ELMAH is configured using this element. You can only have one error logger per project. The type attribute tells ELMAH what error logger to use. In this case we use the SqlErrorLog class from the Elmah assembly, which we already added through NuGet. Other error loggers may require you to add additional packages. The SqlErrorLog logger requires another attribute named connectionStringName. Again, different error loggers require different configuration to run. The connectionStringName should point to a SQL connection string name ErrorLog:

What is an in-memory logger?

In the default configuration, ELMAH uses an in-memory logger which means that errors on the webserver are logged in-memory only. The in-memory logger is meant for development only and we will look at configuring a persistent logger later in this article.

What does ELMAH.AXD mean?

This means that you're only allowed to access elmah.axd when running on localhost. Like mentioned previously, it's not recommended to set this to true.

What does it mean to store errors on Elmah.io?

Storing errors on elmah.io means that you won't need to host a database yourself and you can make use of elmah.io's rich set of apps and integrations.

Does Elmah.io support logging?

elmah.io supports logging errors from ELMAH too. To start logging errors, you will need to sign up for a free elmah.io trial at https://app.elmah.io/signup/. When signing up, you will be guided through creating an organization and your first error log. During those steps, an API key and a log ID are generated. Make sure to keep a copy these.

Access Through ASP.NET Authorization

• So, if the default setting is not being able to access /elmah.axd how do you browse your error logs? Well in fact, combining remote access with ASP.NET authorization rules is your friend. When installing ELMAH, configuration for the elmah.axdURL where added to your web.config file…

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What About ASP.NET MVC?

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The Security Element

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Access Through ASP.NET Authorization

What About ASP.NET MVC?

Would Your Users Appreciate Fewer Errors?