I've a MySql database hosted in my web site, with a table named UsrLic
Where any one wants to buy my software must register and enter his/her Generated Machine Key (+ username, email ...etc).
So my question is:
I want to automate this process from my software, how this Process will be?
Should I connect and update my database directly from my software ( and this means I must save all my database connection parameters in it * my database username , password , server * and then use ADO or MyDac to connect to this database ? and if yes how secure is this process ?
or any other suggestions .
I recommend creating an API on your web site in PHP and calling the API from Delphi.
That way, the database is only available to your web server and not to the client application, ever. In fact, you should run your database on localhost or with a private IP so that only machines on the same physical network can reach it.
I have implemented this and am implementing it again as we speak.
PHP
Create a new file named register_config.php. In this file, setup your MySQL connection information.
Create a file named register.php. In this file, put your registration functions. From this file, include 'register_config.php'. You will pass parameters to the functions you create here, and they will do the reading and writing to your database.
Create a file named register_api.php. From this file, include 'register.php'. Here, you will process POST or GET variables that are sent from your client application, call functions in register.php, and return results back to the client, all via HTTP.
You will have to research connecting to and querying a MySQL database. The W3Schools tutorials will have you doing this very quickly.
For example:
Your Delphi program calls https://mysite/register_api.php with Post() and sends the following values:
name=Marcus
email=marcus#gmail.com
Here's how the beginning of register_api.php might look:
// Our actual database and registration functions are in this library
include 'register.php';
// These are the name value pairs sent via POST from the client
$name = $_POST['name'];
$email = $_POST['email'];
// Sanitize and validate the input here...
// Register them in the DB by calling my function in register.php
if registerBuyer($name, $email) {
// Let them know we succeeded
echo "OK";
} else {
// Let them know we failed
echo "ERROR";
}
Delphi
Use Indy's TIdHTTP component and its Post() or Get() method to post data to register_api.php on the website.
You will get the response back in text from your API.
Keep it simple.
Security
All validation should be done on the server (API). The server must be the gatekeeper.
Sanitize all input to the API from the user (the client) before you call any functions, especially queries.
If you are using shared web hosting, make sure that register.php and register_config.php are not world readable.
If you are passing sensitive information, and it sounds like you are, you should call the registration API function from Delphi over HTTPS. HTTPS provides end to end protection so that nobody can sniff the data being sent off the wire.
Simply hookup a TIdSSLIOHandlerSocketOpenSSL component to your TIdHTTP component, and you're good to go, minus any certificate verification.
Use the SSL component's OnVerifyPeer event to write your own certificate verification method. This is important. If you don't verify the server side certificate, other sites can impersonate you with DNS poisoning and collect the data from your users instead of you. Though this is important, don't let this hold you up since it requires a bit more understanding. Add this in a future version.
Why don't you use e.g. share*it? They also handle the buying process (i don't see how you would do this for yourself..) and let you create a reg key through a delphi app.
Related
I have an app which interacts with the database directly with mysql1 library like the example below:
Future FetchData() async {
final connection = await MySqlConnection.connect(ConnectionSettings(
host: 'mysql-hostname.example.com',
port: 3306,
user: 'root',
password: 'root',
db: 'testDB',
));
var results = await connection.query('SELECT * FROM `testTable` WHERE 1');
for (var row in results) {
print('${row[0]}');
}
// Finally, close the connection
await connection.close();
}
I wonder if this is a safe and secure method. Because when I build the app I pack all the information (username, password) about connecting my database in the app. Is this risky so should I use a separate back-end for this kind of tasks?
It is generally safer to put a trusted backend environment between your database and app. But even in this case you will have to ensure that only your app has access to this backend resource.
For example if you use Firebase as backend, there is an AppCheck service available. Although this is relatively new, it can attest your app's authenticity.
If you prefer to do it on your own, you can create a bearer token that your app will add the the requests, preferably in the request's Authorization header, and check it in the backend before accessing protected resources. But then the question remains, where do you store this bearer token safely.
If you want to keep it in your code, you should properly obfuscate the code before uploading it to the app stores. Even in this case it is a good idea to check for rooted or jailbroken devices to prevent misuse, for example check out flutter_jailbreak_detection.
There are also secure storage packages, which can store sensitive data in a safer way. Unlike SharedPreferences, these can mitigate the risks of unauthorited access to your secrets. See flutter_secure_storage for example.
It really depends on the level of security that you are looking for. Are you storing user-generated sensitive information in your database? Then the answer is that you should ideally not store that information in your code nor should you ship your application with that information bundled inside it.
I highly suggest that you start using Firebase for your usage. Firebase is an absolutely fantastic and free product provided by the Google, the same company behind Flutter, and within a few minutes you can build a whole experience that relies on authentication with Firebase and you can safely store user-generated content in Firebase.
I have been reading the documentation for last 2 days. I'm new to feathersjs.
First issue: any link related to feathersjs is not accessible. Such as this.
Giving the following error:
This page isn’t working
legacy.docs.feathersjs.com redirected you too many times.
Hence I'm unable to traceback to similar types or any types of previously asked threads.
Second issue: It's a great framework to start with Real-time applications. But not all real time application just require alone DB access, their might be access required to something like Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure etc. In my case it's the same and it's more like problem with setting up routes.
I have executed the following commands:
feathers generate app
feathers generate service (service name: upload, REST, DB: Mongoose)
feathers generate authentication (username and password)
I have the setup with me, ready but how do I add another custom service?
The granularity of the service starts in the following way (Use case only for upload):
Conventional way of doing it >> router.post('/upload', (req, res, next) =>{});
Assume, I'm sending a file using data form, and some extra param like { storage: "s3"} in the req.
Postman --> POST (Only) to /upload ---> Process request (isStorageExistsInRequest?) --> Then perform the actual upload respectively to the specific Storage in Req and log the details in local db as well --> Send Response (Success or Failure)
Another thread on stack overflow where you have answered with this:
app.use('/Category/ExclusiveContents/:categoryId', {
create(data, params) {
// do complex stuff here
params.categoryId // the id of the category
data // -> additional data from the POST request
}
});
The solution can viewed in this way as well, since featherjs supports micro service approach, It would be great to have sub-routes like:
/upload_s3 -- uploads to s3
/upload_azure -- uploads to azure and so on.
/upload -- main route which is exposed to users. User requests, process request, call the respective sub-route. (Authentication and Auth to be included as well)
How to solve these types of problems using existing setup of feathersjs?
1) This is a deployment issue, Netlify is looking into it. The current documentation is not on the legacy domain though, what you are looking for can be found at docs.feathersjs.com/api/databases/querying.html.
2) A custom service can be added by running feathers generate service and choosing the custom service option. The functionality can then be implemented in src/services/<service-name>/<service-name>.class.js according to the service interface. For file uploads, an example on how to customize the parameters for feathers-blob (which is used in the file uploading guide) can be found in this issue.
I'm building an application that stores files into the FIWARE Object Storage. I don't quite understand what is the correct way of storing files into the storage.
The code python code snippet below taken from the Object Storage - User and Programmers Guide shows 2 ways of doing it:
def store_text(token, auth, container_name, object_name, object_text):
headers = {"X-Auth-Token": token}
# 1. version
#body = '{"mimetype":"text/plain", "metadata":{}, "value" : "' + object_text + '"}'
# 2. version
body = object_text
url = auth + "/" + container_name + "/" + object_name
return swift_request('PUT', url, headers, body)
The 1. version confuses me, because when I first looked at the only Node.js module (repo: fiware-object-storage) that works with Object Storage, it seemed to use 1. version. As the module was making calls to the old (v.1.1) API version instead of the presumably newest (v.2.0), referencing to the python example, not sure if that is an outdated version of doing it or not.
As I played more with the module, realised it didn't work and the code for it was a total mess. So I forked the project and quickly understood that I will need rewrite it form the ground up, taking the above mention python example from the usage guide as an reference. Link to my repo.
As of writing this the only methods that aren't implement is the object storage (PUT) and object fetching (GET).
Had some addition questions about the Object Storage which I sent to fiware-lab-help#lists.fiware.org, but haven't heard anything back so asking them here.
Haven't got much experience with writing API libraries. Should I need to worry about auth token expiring? I presume it is not needed to make a new authentication, every time we interact with storage. The authentication should happen once when server is starting-up (we create a instance) and it internally keeps it. Should I implement some kind of mechanism that refreshes the token?
Does the tenant id change? From the quote below is presume that getting a tenant I just a one time deal, then later you can use it in the config to make less authentication calls.
A valid token is required to access an object store. This section
describes how to get a valid token assuming an identity management
system compatible with OpenStack Keystone is being used. If the
username, password and tenant details are known, only step 3 is
required. source
During the authentication when fetching tenants how should I select the "right" one? For now i'm just taking the first one similar as the example code does.
Is it true that a object storage container belongs to only a single region?
Use only what you call version 2. Ignore your version 1. It is commented out in the example. It should be removed from the documentation.
(1) The token will be valid for some period of time. This could be an hour or a day, depending on the setup. This period of time should be specified in the token that is returned by the authentication service. The token needs to be periodically refreshed.
(2) The tenant id does not change.
(3) Typically only one tenant id is returned. It is possible, however, that you were assigned more than one id, in which case you have to pick which one you are currently using. Containers typically belong to a single tenant and are not shared between tenants.
(4) Containers are typically limited to a single region. This may change in the future when multi-region support for a container is added to Swift.
Solved my troubles and created the NPM module that works with the FIWARE Object Storage: https://github.com/renarsvilnis/fiware-object-storage-ge
import socket
def functions():
print ("hello")
sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
server_address = ('192.168.137.1', 20000)
sock.bind(server_address)
sock.listen(1)
conn, addr = sock.accept()
print ('Connected by', addr)
sock.listen(1)
conn.sendall(b"Welcome to the server")
My question is how to send a function to the client,
I know that conn.sendall(b"Welcome to the server") will data to the client.
Which can be decoded.
I would like to know how to send a function to a client like
conn.sendall(function()) - this does not work
Also I would like to know the function that would allow the client to receive the function I am sending
I have looked on the python website for a function that could do this but I have not found one.
The functionality requested by you is principally impossible unless explicitly coded on client side. If this were possible, one could write a virus which easily spreads into any remote machine. Instead, this is client right responsibility to decode incoming data in any manner.
Considering a case client really wants to receive a code to execute, the issue is that code shall be represented in a form which, at the same time,
is detached from server context and its specifics, and can be serialized and executed at any place
allows secure execution in a kind of sandbox, because a very rare client will allow arbitrary server code to do anything at the client side.
The latter is extremely complex topic; you can read any WWW browser security history - most of closed vulnerabilities are of issues in such sandboxing.
(There are environments when such execution is allowed and desired; e.g. Erlang cookie-based peering cluster. But, in such cluster, side B is also allowed to execute anything at side A.)
You should start with searching an execution environment (high-level virtual machine) which conforms to your needs in functionality and security. For Python, you'd look at multiprocessing module: its implementation of worker pools doesn't pass the code itself, but simplifies passing data for execution requests. Also, passing of arbitrary Python data without functions is covered with marshal and pickle modules.
Here is the problem: I have a KB Called APP1 that will execute an WebService of an Identity Provider (centralizes all the logins/sessions for different applications) that will return true if there is a logged user in current WebSession that has been granted to access the Application or false otherwise. When I create an web panel at the same KB as the Identity Provider, it works just fine, I get TRUE when there's a logged user, and FALSE when there's not. But when I call it from APP1 it always returns false, I believe that the problem is because the WebSession won't work properly when called through an WS. Any ideas of how to solve it?
My first advice is to try using GAM Single Sign on (X Evolution 3)
WebServices should be Stateless. I think that using the Database instead of WebSession could do the job.
Nonetheless, in order to call a restful WebService you will have to do something more complex as dealing with CookieContainers as stated in the following link.
Consider this solution:
User tries to access App1
There's no web session (App1 doesn't know who is connecting)
App1 redirects User to an IdentityProvider's special login page
If User is not logged, it provides credentials and logs in
IdentityProvider has a session for the user (it knows who is connecting), then it redirects to the referer, appending to the url an encrypted userid parameter.
App1 decodes the parameter, now it knows who is connecting.
App1 saves the userid to the web session, now the user is authenticated
App1 and IdentityProvider must share an encryption key.
Consider that if the encryption key gets compromised or cracked anyone can impersonate another user.
Depending in how secure you want your system to be, you should study other security issues:
every time the user connects it's encrypted login is the same an it shows in the url, it can be easily solved adding a nonce or salt.
The system could be abused generating multiple requests until it gets a valid encrypted userid. It can be mitigated using a large Salt and/or blocking multiple attempts from the same source.
Note that this isn't a tested protocol and I didn't study the security in depth. I got some inspiration from OpenId, but this is a simplified protocol and I could be missing security holes.