Privacy in the Public

wrecked_ · **Author**

Hello community!

I am writing a plugin that will be using SQL, but the database will be 'public' in that everyone will be sending their data to one database (mine). In order to send this data, the information will need to be stored somewhere accessible by the plugin itself. And as we all know, people can read the source.

This data is going to be pretty important since it will not be used on just a local scale, rather it will be used in comparison with ALL servers using said plugin. This is where I need your suggestions. How would you handle this? My ideas that have been shot down:

Encryption's cool, but not when the decryption method is right in front of whoever it's supposed to be hidden from.
Password changes every few hours? No, people would still be able to do whatever the plugin does to find the current password.
Have another closed-source plugin, approved by the approvers, hold nothing but the password to give to the main plugin? Too sketchy and it probably wouldn't be approved. Decompiling is a very slight concern here as well.

Any ideas would be appreciated. ^__^

Exolent[jNr] · 01-02-2011 , 14:00 Re: Privacy in the Public

I will send a PM with a few ideas that I've had before, one of which I used in my Hack Detector when it used a global database.

wrecked_ · 01-02-2011 , 14:16 Re: Privacy in the Public

Sounds good.

fysiks · 01-02-2011 , 14:22 Re: Privacy in the Public

FYI, a closed source plugin will not be approved here since it violates the GPL.

wrecked_ · 01-02-2011 , 14:31 Re: Privacy in the Public

Quote:

Originally Posted by fysiks

FYI, a closed source plugin will not be approved here since it violates the GPL.

Heh, oh yeah.

fysiks · 01-02-2011 , 14:35 Re: Privacy in the Public

Quote:

Originally Posted by wrecked_

Heh, oh yeah.

I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to read from that. There was a closed source plugin that was not even at Alliedmods and was "shutdown" by BAILOPAN. So, nobody should be approving one here.

wrecked_ · 01-02-2011 , 14:42 Re: Privacy in the Public

Quote:

Originally Posted by fysiks

I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to read from that. There was a closed source plugin that was not even at Alliedmods and was "shutdown" by BAILOPAN. So, nobody should be approving one here.

That was me emphasizing how strict of a policy people hold over the GPL around here. No hostility intended.

8088 · 01-02-2011 , 18:56 Re: Privacy in the Public

Will the plugin need write access? Or does it require SELECT-only?

Makes me think of SteamBans, their (Metamod-) plugin is closed source and connects to their database.

wrecked_ · 01-02-2011 , 19:07 Re: Privacy in the Public

Yes it will require write access, and at the moment I'm not even planning on having any SELECTs in the whole plugin. =/

Seta00 · 01-02-2011 , 19:23 Re: Privacy in the Public

Just write a closed source Metamod plugin