For Windows.Forms, I have an application that needs to get a unique install id for each install from my server, and then persist this data so once registered, the install ID is included on all communications back to the server. The application is in occasional contact with the server.
How can I persist this data on the client in a way that is not easily tampered with?
First, you should note that if the data is on the local file system and your application can read and write it, it will always be possible for a determined user to tamper with it... perhaps not easy, but possible nonetheless.
That said, there are a number of options you could consider, including (but not limited to) :
encrypting the data with a key defined in your assembly : pretty safe is the user has no programming skills, but an advanced user could disassemble your app to find the key. Obfuscation could make it harder to extract the key, but not impossible.
using an isolated storage : I'm not sure whether the data is encrypted or not, but at least it's not easily found, hidden in a deep folder hierarchy... Not so safe is the user knows where to look, however
writing the data in a binary format, which makes it harder to read or modify for a non expert user
using a piece of native code to encrypt the data : similar to the first option, but a native DLL is harder to disassemble than a .NET assembly, so it requires more skills to find the key
Again, all these approches are not bulletproof : as long as your program can access the data, an advanced user could always reverse engineer it and do the same...
You could save the data in the windows registry. You'll use the [HKCU\Software\YourAppName] hive key if it's a per-user setting, or [HKLM\Software\YourCompany] if it's a global setting. However, the data would need to be encrypted, because its trivila to get the values in these keys
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I'm currently working on a password managing application in Meteor React and can't seem to find a way to encrypt and decrypt data on the client, with MmongoDB storing the encrypted data.
To add a little background to the task and specify what I am trying to do:
This whole application is for one single company and users are the employees only. The passwords, along with username info and some other attributes are stored in folders and users get view and edit rights to data within the folder. Passwords (along with additional info) need to be encrypted, but multiple users need to be able to access them based on the rights given to them. So when the data is encrypted, say when a person creates a password, other users with the rights to do so need to be able to decrypt this data as well. However, the decryption needs to happen on client and the server can only ever access the encrypted data.
I have tried using planifica:encryption, because it has exactly what we need for our project, but I ran into some errors and I can't get past them nor find any article about them. I have heard of Mylar in some answers to similar questions, but both Mylar and Planifica don't seem to have been updated for a few years now. I know Node.js has a crypto module, but I am not sure whether it could be used to share encrypted data among users and most importantly, how to do so.
Is there any way to do what we need for this project? I should also point out that I am relatively new to meteor and I have not dealt with encryption whatsoever, so my understanding is rather limited.
Thank you for reading!
This very much depends on the encryption you are using, but since you are interested in decrypting things client-side, it sounds like what you are looking for is the SubtleCrypto web api.
That should be all you need on top of what Meteor already provides. You should be able to use a regular meteor collection and publication to share the encrypted data with your clients, and then let them decrypt it using the above linked decrypt function. One question I'd have is how you will be able to get the decryption key to your clients while hiding it from the server, but I assume you've got that part figured out somehow.
At work we use a program based on MS Visual FoxPro. Even though everybody uses the same password, and the information inside the program is not very delicate, I haven't been able to get the password removed. Simply because the developers want money to do the job and my boss doesn't want to pay.
I also use a BAT file to open my most used programs and websites, which are pretty much all on auto-login. Except the MS Visual FoxPro program.
I found a BAT script somewhere that waits a certain amount of time, and then mimics keyboards entries. But for some reason it doesn't seem to work on Win10.
So I am wondering if anybody knows a way to automatically sent the password via the BAT file?
The auto-login script I mention above was found here: Automatically open a browser and login to a site?
We use AutoHotkey to automate certain tasks with our own in-house VFP application. It works well. It supports Windows 10 (though we only use it on 7 and Server 2008 here)
So you have an application developed with M$ Foxpro (one of its various versions).
I cannot speak to how the developers 'built' your application. I can only speak for the various VFP applications that I have written.
When I created applications that 'asked' for Username/Password, I compared the input values against VFP Data table field values that were stored away in an encrypted manner so that the casual 'investigator' could not easily determine the values.
That assumes that the user's were allowed to create new Username/Password combinations - thereby requiring support of dynamic entries.
However the application developers could have done it in a variety of ways:
1. Store encrypted Username/Password values into a local VFP data table.
2. 'Hard code' the Username/Password into the application code prior to compilation (most definitely NOT preferred)
3. Run the input Username/Password against a Web Service where these values are stored on THEIR central system.
With those various ways as possibilities - making it more difficult to tell you which way to go, I'd recommend considering the following:
If an issue is BUSINESS CRITICAL, don't quibble over the Dollars.
I successfully managed to create a SQLite3 DB with Perl using Perl::DBI module.
I was wondering if there was a way to add encryption to the database to my existing Perl code ?
I read thoroughly the 2 following links :
Password Protect a SQLite DB. Is it possible?
SQLite with encryption/password protection
but the provided examples seem only to include proprietary software or C# code (especially this bit here https://stackoverflow.com/a/24349415/3186538).
Thanks in advance.
Well, you could run your data through any of the Crypt::* modules (::DES, ::Blowfish, ::IDEA, etc, in conjunction with ::CBC), then possibly encode it with base64 to get text, before writing it to the DB. And, of course, reverse the operation when reading. You could even create a Perl::DBICrypt module that sat above Perl::DBI and did this automagically.
However, it depends pretty much on how you're going to use it. If you're just worried about someone stealing and using your data, the encryption would be feasible since, without the key, it would be useless.
On the other hand, if you're trying to protect data in a system you distribute, then the key will be available to the attacker (since, without it, your code won't work). So encrypting in that case would be a minor inconvenience at best.
It's something that could only really work if you kept the key away from the attacker (such as if the Perl code runs in an app server controlled by you).
Basically any solution that decrypts data on a box accessible to an attacker will be vulnerable.
I'm building a Windows Store application that uses SQLite for data storage. I have found out, that the database is easily accessible through User's local folder (actually all apps have all data publicly exposed). Is there a way to at least weakly protect the database from access?
you need to look at ProtectedData class
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.security.cryptography.dataprotection.dataprotectionprovider.aspx
It exposes easy to use Protect / Unprotect methods that can be used to encrypt / decrypt that at app level. Encrypt data before writing to db and unencrypt before consuming
I also looking for the same solution and found sqlite-crypt at http://sqlite-crypt.com/download.htm
I don't know whether this one good enough or not. There is a trial version that limit passphrase to 6 characters and store it as plain text in the header. It won't be suitable if you want complete data protection. But for testing, maybe it's worth a try. I don't have a chance to test it yet since I still working on the server side of my project. I'll update it when I've test it in the future.
EDIT: Ok. I've test the trial version and it's worked well with modificated version of SqliteWinRT wrapper on codeplex. Note that the trial is limited to 5-6 characters of passphrase and this phasephrase is stored in plain text, plus it's in x86 compiled binary, which means it won't work for actual product which need ARM support. You have to purchase the binary to get the production-ready binaries.
I have a GWT app, which is deployed on the app engine. The application is basically an exam simulator. All the exam questions and answers are stored in an XML file on the server. I use JAXB parser to parse the XML file and send a list of objects to the client through GWT RPC.
I noticed that during the transit (server -> client), the entire data is visible in plain text in Firebug. Since the data (exam questions and answers) are my intellectual property (IP) and something that I give lot of value to, I'm concerned that it's very easy to steal that data. Therefore, I'm trying to find ways to do some basic encryption and obfuscate the content when it's being sent over from the server to the client.
After Googling, I came across gwt-crypto project, and within a few minutes, I was able to achieve the exact result that I wanted. The server would encrypt the data, and the client would decrypt it. In Firebug, it would show the data in encrypted format, and not as plain text.
However, I ran into an issue. After implementing encryption/decryption, I noticed that my application would not load inside my company's network, which is obviously protected by a firewall. The application works perfectly from home or even on a 3G network on my phone. Another version of the application, which does not use encryption/decryption works perfectly from within my company's network. I confirmed this by creating 2 exact same versions of the app, with the only difference between a boolean flag, that determines whether encryption/decryption is enabled or disabled.
I have the following questions here:
What is the best way to achieve the result that I want to achieve? Is gwt-crypto a good solution for that? I'm fine with any simple approach to obfuscate the data during transit. It doesn't have to be a sophisticated algorithm.
What could be the possible reason for a GWT app, with encryption/decryption enabled, not working inside a firewall? I'm really clueless on this.
I'll appreciate any help on this issue.
Using SSL is the right way to go.
In your case, given AppEngine SSL limitations, you should load your HTML normally from non-SSL domain and use cross-site RPC to load your data via SSL domain.
Update:
What is the best way to achieve the result that I want to achieve?
If you want to secure the data in transit then the only secure option is SSL/HTTP. Usually it's also the simplest one as it does not require you to change the application code, just server configuration. In your particular case (appengine with private domain), it takes more work as described above.
Is gwt-crypto a good solution for that?
No. gwt-crypto uses a key to encrpt/decrypt the data. You also need a secure way to discribute this key.
I'm fine with any simple approach to obfuscate the data during transit.
Security through obscurity in not security. It's a false sense of security, which is even more dangerous than no security. It's enough that only one of the technically capable students cracks this and soon everybody would do it.
Possible attack would go like this:
Snoop the network, get username/password of user.
Login as that user, have browser load exam data, which is now unencrypted in memory.
Dump the DOM and inspect it for exam questions.
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What could be the possible reason for a GWT app, with encryption/decryption
enabled, not working inside a firewall?
Use firebug to make sure network connections are identical, except for the encrypted content. Firewalls should not work that deep. Talk to sysadmin about it.