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<concept id="GUID-9E4D75C0-D797-5541-8E52-3C6D154CC74A" xml:lang="en"><title>ECom

and the Platform Security Architecture</title><prolog><metadata><keywords/></metadata></prolog><conbody>

<p>The Symbian Platform Security Architecture is designed to provide defences

against malicious or badly implemented code. The following aspects of platform

security are particularly relevant to the ECom plug-in architecture: </p>

<ul>

<li id="GUID-299B3BF1-9A55-5CCC-AA77-49F4EBE07ABD"><p>The <i>platform security

capability model</i>, which protects processes from loading and using DLLs

that are less secure than the process itself. </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-92E6F90B-EFE0-5026-AA61-1C068376C21C"><p>Control over software

installation, so that insecure software cannot disrupt legitimately installed

software. </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-2DE8CE05-57EE-582F-80F8-BAEB82B38FAB"><p>Control over which processes

have access to particular files. </p> </li>

</ul>

<p>For more information on the Platform Security Architecture, see <i>Symbian

OS v9 Security Architecture</i> in the <xref href="GUID-9E4D75C0-D797-5541-8E52-3C6D154CC74A.dita">Platform

security</xref> section. </p>

<section><title>ECom and the platform security capability model</title> <p>The

Platform Security Architecture protects processes against loading and using

DLLs that are less secure than the processes themselves. This is done using

platform security capabilities assigned to the process and the DLL. The rule

applied is that the DLL must have the same or greater capabilities than the

process in which it is loaded. </p> <p>With ECom, a plug-in is a DLL that

is loaded into a client process when an interface implementation provided

by that DLL is instantiated. If the plug-in DLL has lower capabilities than

the loading process, then a "permission denied" (-46) error is returned. See <xref href="GUID-8A7B837D-4069-5364-A596-686EEBAE351D.dita">How to troubleshoot plug-in

loading errors</xref> for details of how to investigate this error. </p> <p>Providers

of plug-in DLLs must consider the following with respect to platform security

capabilities: </p> <ul>

<li id="GUID-FB693866-59D7-56DD-9FF4-07AB3CDDA9F7"><p>If you give a plug-in

DLL no capabilities, it can only be used by client processes that also have

no capabilities. </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-8FA6F9BF-9631-5110-8121-219041C07C4A"><p>If you intend a plug-in

to work only with one client program, such as a particular server, then the

documentation for that program should tell you what capabilities it needs. </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-494937B7-AF39-5222-A97E-5F7478A4EC9E"><p>If you want a plug-in

to be usable by any program (apart from the kernel and the file server), then

the capability setting <codeph>All -Tcb</codeph> may be what you require.

Note, however, programs with such high platform security capabilities require

signing and authorisation to be installed by users on phones. See <xref href="https://www.symbiansigned.com/" scope="external">Symbian Signed</xref> for details. </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-B5CD618B-F202-553A-BB5F-F1DF9AF70B58"><p> <i> Custom resolver</i> plug-ins

are a special case. They are loaded by a server process in ECom itself, and

so must be trusted by that server. This requires that you give the plug-in

the <codeph>ProtServ</codeph> capability. See <xref href="GUID-E10A3336-9C4C-59A5-B94F-6CECA92FFB9F.dita">How

to provide a custom resolver</xref> for more details on writing resolvers. </p> </li>

</ul> <p>Platform security also allows you to specify that clients should

only use plug-in implementations supplied by a particular company. See <xref href="GUID-7F4692A0-1801-5D91-8F28-06075AC45DE2.dita">How to filter implementations

by vendor ID</xref> for more details. </p> </section>

<section><title>Installation and upgrade controls</title> <p>Under Platform

Security, the Software Installer program controls what software is installed

to the device. It enables programs originally delivered in ROM, including

ECom plugins, to be upgraded securely. </p> <p>Before platform security, applications

could chose to use only ROM-based plug-ins. This guaranteed that the plug-ins

were secure, but did not allow upgrades. Alternatively, both ROM-based and

installed plug-ins were used, which allowed upgrades, but also risked the

use of possibly insecure plug-ins. </p> <p>Platform security improves this

situation, as it allows clients to access securely both ROM-based plug-ins

and any installed upgrades to those plug-ins. For more information for how

clients can do this, see <xref href="GUID-08007041-CE18-5B1C-9AE6-042EBBFD1AB6.dita">Using

the ROM-only resolver</xref>. </p> <p>Providers of ROM-based plug-ins should

see <xref href="GUID-93F53961-9DA3-5D01-A881-D28E0EBF8B3C.dita">How to upgrade

ROM-based plug-ins securely</xref>. </p> </section>

<section><title>File locations</title><p>The Platform Security architecture

tightly controls access to executable code by: <ul>

<li><p>requiring that all such code, including plug-in DLLs, is located under

a directory <filepath>\sys\bin</filepath></p></li>

<li><p>restricting access to that directory to a small number of key system

processes. </p></li>

</ul></p><p>The registration resource file for a plug-in must be readable

by ECom, but should not be alterable after installation. For this reason,

registration resource files are always installed to the read-only directory <filepath>\resource\plugins</filepath>.</p><p>To

build plug-in code to these locations, set the target type in the project

file to <codeph>PLUGIN</codeph>. For more information, see the <xref href="GUID-641A276D-F618-50CE-BA5A-658DCC26BAB5.dita">Creating an Implementation

Project File</xref> section.  </p> </section>