Securing Internet Information Services (IIS) configuration files

Internet Information Services (IIS) is a modular TCP/IP network server application and a Software Development Kit from Microsoft. As a web server, it provides a platform for hosting and managing web applications and as a software development kit, it facilitates the developers to create applications to manage IIS server, or web applications that run on an IIS server. IIS stores all its configuration settings (server and site level) in plaintext XML files. The reliable functioning of IIS relies heavily on the integrity and confidentiality of these files. The protection provided to these files is; they can be accessed under the administrator's account only and the passwords are stored in encrypted form. But all other configurations relating to sites and the server are present in plaintext and are always accessible to the logged-in administrator. As there is no other protection layer except the administrator account login, therefore if someone manages to get into the system by some means, he can easily modify the files the way, he wants. As the web server is always running (or runs for long time intervals), these files are almost; constantly subjected to threats of integrity and confidentiality. This paper proposes and presents that another security layer be applied on these files, so that the threats to integrity and confidentially be minimized when the configuration files are not being edited by the administrator.