Well, it looks like the new Security tests have been out since June 28th. In both C# and VB.Net flavors. They count as an elective for MCAD or MCSD. I as planning on taking the SQL Server exam to wrap up my MCSD.Net, but now I’m thinking of taking one of these instead. Then I can take the SQL exam after Yukon comes out and they push out all new tests anyway.
I’m not sure how new this is, but I just came across it in a MSDN Flash newsletter. Microsoft has created a MSDN Product Feedback Center that will be used to allow developers to see the latest bug lists, add bugs they have found, and provide suggestions to MS about developer products. It looks like they are starting with the VS.Net 2005 and .Net Framework 2.0, but have plans to expand to other products as well.
A trust boundary is a location in your code that you assume that you can “trust” the calling code not to pass junk in the parameters or attempt something malicious. Within an single executable with no external interfaces pretty much all the code can trust it’s caller, but in a distributed application this is not the case. We have all seen distributed applications (which I’m defining in this context as any application that uses external code located in a separate location, for example local DLLs, web services, etc) that have code in the external resources that simply trusts the caller to provide all it needs and that it has a non malicious purpose with pretty much no security or validation whatsoever.