“ASPNET” vs. “NETWORK SERVICE”

Well, this just wasted the better part of 2 hours.  I’m trying to lock down an ASP.NET app that i’m writing to “least privalege”.  I’ve got the ASPNET and IUSR_ permissions set to “read”, “execute” and “list”.  I kept getting “Server cannot access application directory ‘c:inetpubblahblahblahblah’.  The directory does not exist or is not accessible because of security settings.” 

And i just keep beating my head against this error message for like hours.  If I enable “everyone” then everything’s great.  Take it away and error.  Then I started getting a little tickle in the back of my head suggesting giving rights to “NETWORK SERVICE”.  I do that and everything’s golden. 

The moral of the story is “ASPX runs as ‘NETWORK SERVICE’ on Windows 2003.” 

As I used to say back in back in 3rd grade….“durt durt durrrrrrrrr.“

-Ben