[DGD] Net Security

[Kevin Carpenter]

Felix -

Although I understand your concern, wouldn't this forever prevent the
mud from initiating SMTP mail connections?  The highest priority request
I have from my user community is to enforce a mail-based registration
system for new users.  This is trivial to do with the net package, but
from your description, it sounds like I'll never be able to do it native
*sigh*.

Kevin Carpenter

Felix A. Croes write:
> 
> What I consider unsafe about the net package is the fact that it allows
> outbound connections.  It means that someone who breaks the security of
> the mud can use it to assault another host.  As long as the server
> remains a program that can only respond, the worst thing it can do to
> your machine is use 100% CPU time, use up a lot of memory, and crash to
> leave a large core dump -- it cannot alter or even read files outside
> the mudlib directory.  If you make a separate file system partition for
> the mud, it cannot even use up space intended for other files.
> 
> Another possible problem is masquerading -- with the net package, the
> server can pretend to be something else by accepting connections on
> the appropriate port.  This is of course useful if it happens to be
> what you want as a mud designer, but it can also be extremely useful
> for a hacker.  I prefer the ports that the server listens on to be
> determined by the config file, instead.  (The same problem may occur
> if you keep the config file or the swapfile inside the mudlib tree --
> never do that.)
> 
> Regards,
> Dworkin
> 
> P.S. Stability has not been a problem with the networking package for
>      years.
> 
> 
> 
> List config page:  http://list.imaginary.com/mailman/listinfo/dgd
> 


-- 
Kevin Carpenter
(Expressing his comments from home in St. Louis, where this message originated)



List config page:  http://list.imaginary.com/mailman/listinfo/dgd