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On Fri, 14 December 2001, rob@dekko.com wrote: > Everyone may rant on how hard coding user id's and passwords are a bad idea > but there are some applications where this is a necessity. Well, I suppose > you could put them in a dataarea or some such animal but you get the same > results. I think I have to agree with Rob on this to a degree. In the real world of interoperable and interconnected business systems, it's simply a business necessity at times to have applications exchange profiles/passwords without human interaction. You can't have absolute control over the practices of business partners. However, at least a couple things can be done. First, avoid protocols that transmit such info via clear-text (Duh!) And second, rather than hard-coding, use soft-coding. The application itself should never need the actual profile/password. It should only need to know where and how to obtain it. Accessing it externally (and securely, of course) helps reduce the impact of the situation that started this debate -- i.e., even if the QUSER password is changed, big deal; the location containing the profile/password should simply be changed as well. Of course, in that original situation (QUSER being used within an application without the knowledge of the tech responsible for QUSER), the system is effectively being held hostage by the application(s). If QUSER is being used without knowledge, it now becomes difficult to change QUSER password. The impact is currently unpredictable; and I'd find that unacceptable. Tom Liotta -- Tom Liotta The PowerTech Group, Inc. 19426 68th Avenue South Kent, WA 98032 Phone 253-872-7788 Fax 253-872-7904 http://www.400Security.com ___________________________________________________ The ALL NEW CS2000 from CompuServe Better! Faster! More Powerful! 250 FREE hours! Sign-on Now! http://www.compuserve.com/trycsrv/cs2000/webmail/
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