Documentation for creating a Custom Credential Provider in Windows

Where is the documentation on cre开发者_StackOverflowating a custom Windows Credential Provider located? Everything I've found so far points to the same article on how to make a custom credential provider (MSDN Magazine: "Create Custom Login Experiences With Credential Providers For Windows Vista"), but neither that article nor anything else I can find provides documentation on how things actually work. At best there are some code samples, but those don't explain the full mechanics of credential providers or usefully show how to roll your own.

There is now a proper documentation here. It contains everything you should know when developing custom credential providers.

In an article on Windows Vista Smart Card Infrastructure, there is a link to Credential Provider Technical Reference (link to Credential Provider Technical Reference on archive.msdn.microsoft.com). The list contains a document which describes the Windows Vista Credential Provider Framework. I think you will find this technical reference quite helpful in understanding how Credential Provider in Windows works.

Hope you find what you are looking for!

In the Windows SDK, there is a Credential Provider code example in the Samples\security folder. There is also documentation (in MHTML format) for the example, contained in the SDK files. In the latest Windows SDK, the Credential Provider example has been updated to be suitable for Windows 7, says the document.

Strangely, the documentation doesn't seem to be available online anywhere. It's just there in the SDK docs.

Please note that Microsoft Windows SDK is something that you need to separately install, even if you already have Visual Studio installed.

Welcome to the beautiful world of Windows 10.

Microsoft have actually updated the documentation a tiny little bit for Windows 10, there is this page, and at the bottom, it links to the technical reference for credentail providers with updates for Windows 10. Which has (at the time of writing this) a big disclaimer at the top that it is only pre-release information and accuracy is not guaranteed. For example, at the bottom of the reference is still the e-mail address credprov@microsoft.com which has apparently been invalid for a long time already.

The most recent source code example is the open-source C# wrapper pgina which may help illustrate how to use this CredentialProvider API.

This MSMVP How-To looks pretty helpful up to Windows 7 and points you to some documentation. And this MSDN V2 Credential Provider sample includes changes for Windows 8/8.1. Seems like a good place to start.