[Freeciv-Dev] Re: client/server authentication (PR#1767)

["Mark Metson" <markm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 8 May 2003, ChrisK@xxxxxxxx wrote:

> Yes. But saving a password in clear text in a script or rc file is also
> silly. Mark is not concerned about security on his machine (whatever this
> means) but about the hassle to enter the password.

What it means is if someone physically gets at my keyboard I have plenty 
more things to worry about than that they might mess with my FreeCiv game. 
Same with lots of people. Some folk maybe even have their E-Currency 
account usernames and passwords stashed in their browser. The assumption 
is that if someone gets onto your machine as you you're screwed. For 
example they could read your notes files in which you stash all kinds of 
valuable passwords.

I'll concede that if you happen to be the kind of weirdo that sometimes 
lets others telnet/shh to your machine you might worry about ps/top 
showing your commandlines. So a way to keep the password from showing up 
there would be fine. I already posted a couple of ideas around that.

I am thinking of long-term games - maybe VERY long term because I am about 
to re-open a topic from long ago regarding putting many worlds/games into 
one galaxy and allowing play of all the worlds to continue as new worlds 
are colonised instead of arbitrarily ending the game when one colony ship 
reaches another planet.

Probably we would then want for example to be able to tell windows users 
how to make an icon that will log them into the game automatically. A 
"shortcut" maybe or something.

Maybe in the long run the best method might end up being to have a list of 
their current games in their client so they choose which game from a list 
much like choosing a server in the metaserver.

-MarkM-

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