[Opensim-dev] Critical plugin check?

[Sean Dague]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 01:49:35PM -0700, Kyle Hamilton wrote:
> I think that there's something a bit worrisome about this idea.
> 
> What if the server were hacked such that, say, a money-management
> module was substituted?  (Remember, most attacks are not from people
> outside the organization, but rather inside the organization.  If some
> disgruntled sysadmin decided to start playing around with the economy,
> it might be extremely damaging and destroy a lot of confidence in the
> economy -- which would have the effect of making the economy
> unsustainable, since economies that aren't backed by real value [such
> as gold] only exist by virtue of economic-participant confidence.)

If you have physical access to the server, all bets are off.  They could
just as easily fiddle db numbers as load a new module.  You can't
protect yourself from people who can log into you box and get a shell.

When looking at rework of the plugin approach, I'd suggest that we
standardize on Mono Addins, and build from there.  Right now we've got 3
or 4 different loaders, and all the custom different loaders we wrote
don't seem to gain us much over just using addins.

    -Sean

-- 
__________________________________________________________________

Sean Dague                                       Mid-Hudson Valley
sean at dague dot net                            Linux Users Group
http://dague.net                                 http://mhvlug.org

There is no silver bullet.  Plus, werewolves make better neighbors
than zombies, and they tend to keep the vampire population down.
__________________________________________________________________
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://opensimulator.org/pipermail/opensim-dev/attachments/20080618/b4f897b9/attachment-0001.pgp>