PlugIns - Preventing Malicious Code...
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Hello experts, I'm working on a system which would be able to dinamically load all kinds of multiplayer games. In order for the system to know how to handle any game, I set up some ground rules using an abstract class named
GameEngine. Among other stuff, it contains an abstractProcessMessage()method. At first I thought of loading DLLs from a special folder, and analyzing every class which inheritsGameEngine. But then came another thought into my mind... What if someone, instead of implementing a game, inheritsGameEngineand puts down malicious code intoProcessMessage()? My first solution is not to read DLLs from a directory, but to read only a DLL that I will code... Whenever I want to add another game, I would update the DLL... However, this prevents other programmers from adding games to my program... What can I do? Thanks in advance, Shy. -
Hello experts, I'm working on a system which would be able to dinamically load all kinds of multiplayer games. In order for the system to know how to handle any game, I set up some ground rules using an abstract class named
GameEngine. Among other stuff, it contains an abstractProcessMessage()method. At first I thought of loading DLLs from a special folder, and analyzing every class which inheritsGameEngine. But then came another thought into my mind... What if someone, instead of implementing a game, inheritsGameEngineand puts down malicious code intoProcessMessage()? My first solution is not to read DLLs from a directory, but to read only a DLL that I will code... Whenever I want to add another game, I would update the DLL... However, this prevents other programmers from adding games to my program... What can I do? Thanks in advance, Shy.shyagam wrote:
What if someone, instead of implementing a game, inherits GameEngine and puts down malicious code
A plugin system is per design an "open system", what means malicious code here? First of all, the game user needs to download and install a plugin, so I would say if someone uses code from an unknown source he/she is generally responsible for caused damage! In case you just want to protect users from e.g. downloading broken plugins then have a checksum with each DLL that your downloader checks (i.e. SHA1 checksum does no match with DLL then delete it). Perhaps you can offer quality control to plugin developers and give a "verified" rating to decent plugins... or list good plugins on your webpage (e.g. see IrfanView)? If your question is about limiting plugins from sources other than yourself: You could sign each DLL cryptographically or have an initial handshake with a "license" that enables certain functionality... but at the end of the day this can be technically circumvented since the algorithm/key is somewhere inside the plugin or the application. When I follow the PS/Wii/Xbox modding scene I think vendor locking attempts are quite futile... Hope it helps.