Guild of Writers

In Drizzle, what is Network Access? And what risks does it pose?

Coming soon, at a theater near you:

CLASH OF THE MODERATORS

It (dis)allows ages to connect to the internet to download content for journals etc. It is disabled and advised to be kept that way because this involves a security risk.

I too was wondering. Thank's Luna for your explanation, clearer than Chacal's one (but less funny).

The security risk is not any higher than it is within any other program on your computer that connects to the internet. It is a good thing that Drizzle shows this alert because people need to be aware of the risk. And this way there does not need to be an alert within the age itself which would only distract from the story. However, ultimately it is up to the users to decide if they trust the maker of a program (or in this case an age) or if they want to miss features which make use of network access.

Dynamically updated journals are used in Ahra Pahts Shell 415. As far as I know it has not been used in other ages yet. I plan to create a wiki page which explains how to make them. This method does not install anything on your computer. Information is retrieved from the internet in order to update a journal, but this is read into memory. The information is removed again when you leave the age.
If you did not install enabled network access the dynamic journal will still work because it also contains conventional static content. You just won't get the latest version of that content.

XD Chacal!

As Luna says, it allows an Age to connect to the internet. There are a number of problems involved with this, including (but not limited to):

• Persistency: you can't truly get back to an old version of an Age, because the old journal isn't on your computer nor UAM.
• Security: it is difficult to verify that the Age isn't secretly downloading something harmful. Especially since the behavior can be different every single day, because of the lack of persistency.
• Privacy: this is perhaps the biggest danger. Having NetworkAccess enabled allows any Age author to spy on you, and there is no way, even in principle, for you to distinguish malicious from non-malicious behavior.

So the only way to be safe is to have NetworkAccess disabled. Don't worry though, Drizzle will warn you if it is enabled, and the UAM Shard has it disabled as well. As an Age author, you should assume that the vast majority of people will not have NetworkAccess enabled, and encouraging them to enable it might be considered abuse.

Points 2 and 3 apply to Drizzle as well.

Point 1 is just a matter of opinion. I don't see why anyone would want to go back to an older version of my age if I added improvements later.

P.S. And the only way to be truly safe is cancel you internet service.

Thanks, now I know that I shouldn't add that stuff to my Age.

D'Lanor wrote:Points 2 and 3 apply to Drizzle as well.

No, because you need only trust one person: Dustin (me). And I've been doing this since the start of homemade Uru Ages, and obviously by installing Drizzle (like any software) they are trusting the software's author. The NetworkAccess package requires them to trust every Age author. And even if I weren't trustworthy, the only info I would have access to is that they installed a particular Age at a particular time, and not details about where and when they visited, nor who with, nor any other details about them that can be passed around by the NetworkAccess package.

And I can guarantee that not everyone in the community is trustworthy: there was an incident with a trojan designed to bring down other shards (and in particular Pelishard), made to look like a bug. (And it was entirely successful: Dhel and Mystler don't know the true cause to this day.) The only reason I was aware of this trojan was because the author told me they had created it with this purpose. (I think they thought I would be proud of them :P) Fortunately, we got that person to revert it, and that version of their package is no longer on UAM. Now whenever there is an update to their package, I go over it with a fine-toothed comb, analyzing all changes to all the files before allowing it onto UAM.

Chacal wrote:Coming soon, at a theater near you:

CLASH OF THE MODERATORS

On topic:
Technically, ages can still do network access without that packet, it is just harder for them. Python can execute binaries installed on the system. Now I know you are scanning the sources of the ages for some keywords, but there are so many ways to obfuscate code in a scripting language, I bet there are enough ways to bypass it. Either way, you need to trust the age author not do do anything malicious.

So, having dynamic web-loaded content in your age is not a bad thing per se, nathan. It's up to you to decide whether you like that technique or not. Unfortunately, Drizzle is exaggerating the riscs associated with it, so it's a good thing you asked here! Do not get me wrong: As D'Lanor said, I agree that it is good Drizzle warns about it, as people should be aware what kind of access they give their offline Uru. It could be more informative though.

And even if I weren't trustworthy, the only info I would have access to is that they installed a particular Age at a particular time, and not details about where and when they visited, nor who with, nor any other details about them that can be passed around by the NetworkAccess package.

Well, no - if you were not trustworthy, you could have any info you wanted, sent to you by Drizzle which runs arbitrary code on my machine. Of course I can check the several 100k lins of source code, but that argument applies to the age's Python code as well.