Programatically adding an application to Windows 8 Loopback exceptions

Question

I am finding myself out of my depth when trying to programatically add a Windows 8 'Metro' application to the Loopback exceptions list using the code provided by Microsoft below:

// Call this API to enumerate all of the AppContainers on the system 
[DllImport("FirewallAPI.dll")] 
internal static extern uint NetworkIsolationEnumAppContainers(out uint pdwCntPublicACs, out IntPtr ppACs); 

// Call this API to free the memory returned by the Enumeration API 
[DllImport("FirewallAPI.dll")] 
internal static extern void NetworkIsolationFreeAppContainers(IntPtr pACs); 

// Call this API to load the current list of Loopback-enabled AppContainers
[DllImport("FirewallAPI.dll")] 
internal static extern uint NetworkIsolationGetAppContainerConfig(out uint pdwCntACs, out IntPtr appContainerSids); 

// Call this API to set the Loopback-exemption list 
[DllImport("FirewallAPI.dll")]
internal static extern uint NetworkIsolationSetAppContainerConfig(uint pdwCntACs, SID_AND_ATTRIBUTES[] appContainerSids); 

// Use this API to convert a string SID into an actual SID 
[DllImport("advapi32.dll", SetLastError=true)]
internal static extern bool ConvertStringSidToSid(string strSid, out IntPtr pSid); 

// Use this API to convert a string reference (e.g. "@{blah.pri?ms-resource://whatever}") into a plain string 
[DllImport("shlwapi.dll", CharSet=CharSet.Unicode, ExactSpelling=true)] 
internal static extern int SHLoadIndirectString(string pszSource, StringBuilder pszOutBuf, int cchOutBuf, IntPtr ppvReserved);

For those unaware of the Windows 8 application security, 'Metro' apps are not allowed to communicate with localhost unless added to the exceptions list. The above code facilitates this (apparently), but I cannot work out for example how to add Internet Explorer to the exceptions list.

Can anybody provide any examples on how to use this code? I'm really lost!

Answer 1

Example adding Edge to exceptions:

// We need construct PSID from this string sid
const string EDGE_SID = "S-1-15-2-3624051433-2125758914-1423191267-1740899205-1073925389-3782572162-737981194";
IntPtr pSid = IntPtr.Zero;
ConvertStringSidToSid(EDGE_SID, out pSid); // Pinvoked

List<SID_AND_ATTRIBUTES> list = PI_NetworkIsolationGetAppContainerConfig(); // For simplicity, this is borrowed from complex example below.

SID_AND_ATTRIBUTES item = new SID_AND_ATTRIBUTES(); // This Struct can be found in complex example too
item.Sid = sid;
list.Add(item);

uint r = NetworkIsolationSetAppContainerConfig((uint)list.Count, list.ToArray());

Here is complex example of usage.