Rev player

Richard Gaskin ambassador at fourthworld.com
Tue Jul 27 05:37:00 EDT 2004


Robert Brenstein wrote:
>> Any changes to the behavior of secureMode must be done in the engine. 
>> If they are handled in script then a script can change the behavior, 
>> leaving the door open to hackers.
>>
>> An engine-level solution has been bandied about in Bugzilla:
>> <http://www.runrev.com/revolution/developers/bugdatabase/show_bug.cgi?id=867> 
>>
>> Until such a change is made at the engine level, I agree with Kevin's 
>> position of erring on the side of safety.
> 
> While I agree with Richard, I am also somewhat concerned that this 
> omission may become sour grapes for the player. Capability to save is so 
> fundamental to operation of most programs that it is very likely the 
> first thing any player user will do (will have to do) is to disable 
> secure mode. That may thus become a support issue (why my data is not 
> saved?) aside from making the secureMode sort of useless.

But at that point it's the user's decision.  You can decide to turn off 
your Windows firewall too, if you want your machine hijacked for 
spamming in under 15 minutes. ;)

When the user decides to turn off secureMode, they are assuming the same 
level of risk that they would downloading any executable from 
Download.com, VersionTracker, etc. (and arguably less risk than normal 
usage of any Microsoft operating system).

But as Kevin said, adding limited file I/O to secure modes it being 
worked on, so any inconvenience should be short-lived.

> PS A malicious person can include an external which I don't think can be 
> prevented from accessing disks and system.

SecureMode shuts down not just file I/O, but also shell, AppleScript, 
and registry access.  I agree that if it doesn't currently shut down the 
externals API it should.  Is that the case?

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  ___________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com


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