Hi,

I want to design a secure mechanism to pass username/password from one
process to another, but won' t use shared public key to inside source code
for encryption / decryption due to its obviouse security hole, anyone who
can access srouce code know the key.

several approaches conceiving now:
1. pass as command line argument in win32 use CreateProcess(). There is
security hole here.
2. use shared memory for IPC. but looks like we never previent 3rd party to
process to break into shared memory if its name is known. Same thing even we
use public key, however the key cannot be safely passed to another process.
3. ... what else...

Is there any standard way to handle such things?

Thanks very much!

-John

Re: pass username/password between processes by Mark

Mark
Thu Nov 03 03:59:43 CST 2005

.NET 1.1 has some secure string memory spaces, that said - I know nothing
about where you would find them as I dont particually use .NET.

To be most secure you would encrypt your password using PKE - there arnt
really any other ways - everything else is vunerable and there will always
be a way to intercept it.

In short, due to the nature of the operating system... No, there is no
absolute 100% way to do this. When the file resides on a computer outside of
your control you can only attempt 'best bet' and take into account the time
it takes you to try and secure every vector you could probably add a lot
more functionality to your products.

--
- Mark Randall
http://zetech.swehli.com

"Those people that think they know everything are a great annoyance to those
of us who do"
Isaac Asimov
"John" <johnli1995@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:47F9f.8666$7h7.6929@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com...
> Hi,
>
> I want to design a secure mechanism to pass username/password from one
> process to another, but won' t use shared public key to inside source
> code for encryption / decryption due to its obviouse security hole, anyone
> who can access srouce code know the key.
>
> several approaches conceiving now:
> 1. pass as command line argument in win32 use CreateProcess(). There is
> security hole here.
> 2. use shared memory for IPC. but looks like we never previent 3rd party
> to process to break into shared memory if its name is known. Same thing
> even we use public key, however the key cannot be safely passed to another
> process.
> 3. ... what else...
>
> Is there any standard way to handle such things?
>
> Thanks very much!
>
> -John
>