Locking your system (why anything you do can be defeated)

[cafeenman]

OK, This is a rant. You may want to turn back now.

For those of you who want to (let me know if I've missed anything here):

1) Lock people out of your system
2) Lock people out of a hard drive
3) Lock people out of a folder
4) Lock people out of files
5) Make your excellent application the only one a person can use.
6) inflict your beautiful cursor on people who didn't ask for it.
7) Set your great web site as the home page for everyone who uses your app or visits your site.
8) Hide your app from everyone so it can watch them but they don't know.
9) Any other control freak thing you want to do.

IT WILL NOT WORK. Period! A computer is a physical object. So are the hard drives and everything else they are made up of. If there is a way to do it, then there is a way to undo it. Nothing you do can stop someone who wants to get at the computer badly enough.

If I want to delete a folder that Windows is protecting I can shell to DOS and delete it that way. Or I can boot from a floppy. Or I can do other things if those don't work, but they usually do.

Encryption is the most difficult security to defeat once someone is on your system.

So here's how you protect your computer:

1) Take control of it.
2) Put a bios password on it.
3) Don't put anything you care about on a public computer.


Other than that, don't be a control freak with your application. If you are deploying it to others, it is their computer and if they don't know how to use it then that's their problem. You do not have to babysit with your applications.

OK, I'm done now. Thanks. Have a great day. Write something wonderful.

[KayJay]

That said, it is possible to make a system 85% - 95% (arbitary numbers ) The point is to make a system secure to a higher level than the current position. So while it is important to acknowledge that 100% is not possible, Leaving it 50% or less secure is not the right approach.

I have been drilled with the above when I put up the same objections to my clients. Their only request to me is make it as hard as possible for me to break into the PC using ALL the previous techniques that I had come up with.

And tell u what, It works. Am currently bettering myself for another client of mine and its sort of coming out pretty well so far.

[Staifour]

well
you are both right
but when you use NTFS instead of FAT you can do miracles
you can encrypt your files using SSL which is nearly impossible to break, you can give policies to users to use certain file/folders/drives
you can give them quota so that they don't use more then what you give them of HD spaces, and tehy can't undo this cause they are users and you are administrator, all of this using windows 2000 professional
if you mean using VB, encrypting is really good, only a really good mathematician, or a hacker or cracker or reverse engineer can undo your work

[cafeenman]

I did say that encryption is the best form of security on a computer. But....

My computer has NTSF and I can boot with a dos disk and delete anything I want.

My point being that there are too many people trying to lock people out of things and they aren't going to be too successful if someone with some computer savvy wants to get at them.

I agree that security is necessary and should be maintained and advanced. But we are writing VB programs, not government-level security classification applications.

If that kind of security is really necessary then they need to go to bonded software developers who really know what they're doing and have dedicated systems.

Other than that, I think a lot of people are just playing around to see if they can do it more than out of necessity.

[mendhak]

Originally posted by cafeenman

Other than that, I think a lot of people are just playing around to see if they can do it more than out of necessity.

And to satisfy their ego.


You're right, nothing is ever 100% complet.
(get it? complet and not complete? )

My present scenario is just wonderful:
where I'm working on a project, we have a lot of dumb people there (don't ask why). Sometimes, they'll come and ask me to protect a folder or a file or a web page, I just give them the simplest instruction: put a password for windows. That always hits the right bone with them. They get so impressed, they start gushing over me. I'm a friggin' celebrity!!


OK, That aside, yes! do it for necessity!

[ogagsme]

And if you really want full security, the best way to do it is...

1. Disconnect your computer from the world(internet), and
2. Don't let anybody use it.