Security issues

Applies to: Visual Studio Visual Studio for Mac

To debug a program using Visual Studio, the only permissions needed are the same ones a developer requires to run the program. This includes remote debugging for most situations. Some situations, involving other services, such as the Internet Information Service, may require a higher level of permissions.

While Visual Studio is running, the process debug manager (PDM) tracks debug processes on the local machine. Remotely, a program called msvsmon.exe is started by the developer to handle remote debugging and make the PDM available. (msvsmon.exe is not a service and must be started manually to enable remote debugging on that machine.) When Visual Studio (or msvsmon.exe) is not running, no processes are tracked for debugging.

A developer can debug programs that they started with no special permissions. The developer can even debug processes started by someone else if that other person is a member of the same security group. And, to enable remote debugging, it's necessary only to copy the required files to the remote machine and start msvsmon.exe. For more information, see Remote debugging.

See also

• Debugging tasks
• Process debug manager
• Remote debugging