Re: Securing Flash Games.

[Maciej Lisiewski <c2h5oh () poczta fm>]

> This is correct. It it is about the scores and of course not to mention I
> do not want to have a lets say automated macro running that "players" can
> run so that it plays the flash game with a perfect score. But this is my
> last concern. The main concern is the score manipulation in the memory.

If the value is accessible by the user (and it is, since it is running 
client side) the only thing you can do is to make cheating more difficult.

To prevent results manipulation you have to:
- keep the score/character stats/anything else that player might want to 
modify server side
- keep the score calculation server side as well - storing just values 
server side will give you very little protection if cheater could just 
send "increase score by 500" request to the server. Cheater will be able 
to monitor all the communications between the game and the server, so 
you can be pretty sure it will happen rather sooner than later.


> I want to thank you all for the fast answers. I will try to have most of
> the data running on the server side it self. This should be the best
> option. Although it will be a little bit slower, but we can accept that.

Do implement all that stuff client side as well - sure, calculations 
will be duplicated, but it will happen client side (no extra expenses 
for you) and will reduce lag. Just validate when needed.


Basically you will have to run all the relevant game logics server side, 
send all user actions (with precise timestamps - so the lag does not 
alter the results), process them, "keep the score" and verify if the 
data user sent is valid when it is relevant to your services.

As for macros just use in-game captcha and remember: captcha does not 
equal those maddening distorted chars. captcha is anything what would 
easily let you to verify if you are dealing with a human, not a machine 
- anything that a human will be able to react to in an instant and will 
be much trouble to a machine.


--
Maciej Lisiewski


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