Posted by Erland Sommarskog on 12/13/06 22:42

Laurence Breeze (i.l.breeze@open.ac.uk) writes:
> Running sp_helplogins gives the 3 logins previously mentioned and 4
> others I wasn't expecting:
>
> ##MS_AgentSigningCertificate##
> ##MS_SQLAuthenticatorCertificate##
> ##MS_SQLReplicationSigningCertificate##
> ##MS_SQLResourceSigningCertificate##
>
> These also appear in the sys.server_principles catalog.

It would a bad idea to delete these. These logins are mapped to
certificates and it is not possible to log in as these. (You see this
in the type_desc column.)

Certificates mapped to logins are used in scheme which makes it possible
to grant permissions to users through an SQL module. Exactly what these
four predefined login are used for I don't know, but dropping them
could cause problems the day you would have needed them.

Overall, there is a lot of new stuff around security in SQL 2005.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server 2005 at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/downloads/books.mspx
Books Online for SQL Server 2000 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinfo/previousversions/books.mspx

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