With .NET 6 Support Ending, Security Vulnerabilities Loom -- Visual Studio Magazine

With .NET 6 Support Ending, Security Vulnerabilities Loom

By David Ramel
08/05/2024

While many Visual Studio developers are awaiting the debut of .NET 9 in November, they might want to pay attention to a looming security issue with .NET 6, which will reach end of support at the same time, perhaps leaving apps open to cybersecurity attacks.

"Continuing to use an unsupported version will expose you to security vulnerabilities," Microsoft said in a blog post last month announcing .NET 6 end of support on Nov. 12, 2024, the date of the company's .NET Conf event where new .NET releases are debuted.

Microsoft will no longer provide updates or technical support for .NET 6 after that, even security fixes, with the company advising developers to update to .NET 8 to stay supported.

**[Click on image for larger view.]** .NET Release Timeline *(source: Microsoft).*

Along with no more security updates and end of technical support, developers can expect these development upon end of support for .NET 6, Microsoft said:

Getting NETSDK1138 build warnings when targeting .NET 6 from a later SDK.
Getting "gold bar" warnings in Visual Studio when targeting .NET 6.

Upgrading to .NET 8 before the debut of .NET 9 involves changing the value of the TargetFramework property in a project file to net8.0, along with updating development and hosting environments, which is all covered in Microsoft guidance titled "Upgrade to a new .NET version."

Note that upgrading development environments primarily involves installing a new .NET SDK, which is done automatically by new editions of Visual Studio, so Visual Studio users need only upgrade to a newer version of the IDE. Microsoft guidance says Visual Studio 2022 17.8 or later is required for .NET 8 development. The current version of Visual Studio 2022 is 17.10.5, released on July 25, 2024.

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer for Converge360.

Printable Format

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

VS Code Experiments Boost AI Copilot Functionality

Devs can now customize code generation, enjoy enhanced Chat experiences and much more.
AdaBoost Binary Classification Using C#

Dr. James McCaffrey from Microsoft Research presents a C# program that illustrates using the AdaBoost algorithm to perform binary classification for spam detection. Compared to other classification algorithms, AdaBoost is powerful and works well with small datasets, but is sometimes susceptible to model overfitting.
From Core to Containers to Orchestration: Modernizing Your Azure Compute

The cloud changed IT forever. And then containers changed the cloud. And then Kubernetes changed containers. And then microservices usurped monoliths, and so it goes in the cloudscape. Here's help to sort it all out.
The Well-Architected Architect on Azure

In the dynamic field of cloud computing, the architect's role is increasingly pivotal as they must navigate a complex landscape, considering everything from the overarching architecture and individual service configurations to the various trade-offs involved. Here's help.