We recently updated our SharePoint instance with the latest update and realised that suddenly all of our workflows were starting to throw a ‘Failed to Start’ status, which upon further investigation, it was found that we were seeing the following error in the SharePoint ULS Logs –

Type System.CodeDom.CodeBinaryOperatorExpression is not marked as authorized in the application configuration file.

Solution

SharePoint 2013

After a little searching online I discovered that the issue lies within the web.config for our SharePoint deployment and can be easily fixed by adding the following Authorized Assemblies –

<authorizedType Assembly=”System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ NameSpace=”System.CodeDom” TypeName=”CodeBinaryOperatorExpression” Authorized=”True” />

<authorizedType Assembly=”System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ NameSpace=”System.CodeDom” TypeName=”CodePrimitiveExpression” Authorized=”True” />

<authorizedType Assembly=”System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ NameSpace=”System.CodeDom” TypeName=”CodeMethodInvokeExpression” Authorized=”True” />

<authorizedType Assembly=”System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ NameSpace=”System.CodeDom” TypeName=”CodeMethodReferenceExpression” Authorized=”True” />

<authorizedType Assembly=”System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ NameSpace=”System.CodeDom” TypeName=”CodeFieldReferenceExpression” Authorized=”True” />

<authorizedType Assembly=”System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ NameSpace=”System.CodeDom” TypeName=”CodeThisReferenceExpression” Authorized=”True” />

<authorizedType Assembly=”System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ NameSpace=”System.CodeDom” TypeName=”CodePropertyReferenceExpression” Authorized=”True” />

Once added to the web.config, be sure to restart IIS for the change to take effect.

SharePoint 2007 & SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2007 & SharePoint 2010 also currently have the same issue, which can be resolved by following the same steps as above but by adding the following authorized assemblies to web.config instead.

<authorizedType Assembly=”System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ NameSpace=”System.CodeDom” TypeName=”CodeBinaryOperatorExpression” Authorized=”True” />

<authorizedType Assembly=”System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ NameSpace=”System.CodeDom” TypeName=”CodePrimitiveExpression” Authorized=”True” />

<authorizedType Assembly=”System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ NameSpace=”System.CodeDom” TypeName=”CodeMethodInvokeExpression” Authorized=”True” />

<authorizedType Assembly=”System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ NameSpace=”System.CodeDom” TypeName=”CodeMethodReferenceExpression” Authorized=”True” />

<authorizedType Assembly=”System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ NameSpace=”System.CodeDom” TypeName=”CodeFieldReferenceExpression” Authorized=”True” />

<authorizedType Assembly=”System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ NameSpace=”System.CodeDom” TypeName=”CodeThisReferenceExpression” Authorized=”True” />

<authorizedType Assembly=”System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″ NameSpace=”System.CodeDom” TypeName=”CodePropertyReferenceExpression” Authorized=”True” />

For further information I’d suggest referring to Rodney Viana’s excellent post on this which can be found at the link below, It’s worth noting this issue is known by Microsoft and is currently being worked on.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rodneyviana/2018/09/13/after-installing-net-security-patches-to-address-cve-2018-8421-sharepoint-workflows-stop-working/