137 replies to this topic

[Cloudy]

Broadcast will probably die. It is horribly misused anyway.

[PixelToast]

Cloudy, on 30 November 2012 - 07:21 AM, said:

Broadcast will probably die. It is horribly misused anyway.

i already used frequency 0 to negotiate a random frequency to use with other client
the only thing i use broadcast for is to locate network hosts nearby, wich can also just be send to freq 0

[ChunLing]

As long as you can still access the same functionality by using rednet.send(nil,message), I don't have any objection to deprecating rednet.broadcast(). But if you actually disable the rednet.send(nil,message) function, then you're just going to get a bunch of "clever" workarounds involving large for loops and such, which strikes me as counterproductive.

Really, rednet.send already works so well (properly used) that it's hard to justify "improving" it. Though the point of the original post was making it easier to hack, which isn't an improvement. And what the heck is wrong with the old trick of sneaking to a node and reprogramming it (particularly since you can do it remotely using a turtle with a floppy and disk drive)? It's just a little harder, it isn't fundamentally impossible (unless they've arranged some kind of anti-turtle defenses around the target computers, in which case props to them and step up to the challenge).

[GopherAtl]

I think one of the goals of the frequency system is to allow sending to multiple computers without looping or using broadcast. Take gps as an example, instead of broadcast you would choose a gps frequency which you could send to and receive from all gps hosts on. In general this means that new computers can be added to existing systems without hard-coding any ids anywhere. This sort of thing, not the "easier hacking," is the improvement.

[Cranium]

Cloudy, on 30 November 2012 - 07:21 AM, said:

Broadcast will probably die. It is horribly misused anyway.

I just have a question about existing programs that make use of rednet.broadcast. Will there be an option for backwards compatability where any call to rednet.broadcast would simply default to frequency 0?

[tom2018]

well it would not be hard to hack... you have it automatically scan trough all possible frequencies.
in this example rednet.set is frequency setter

start = 1
range = 1000
c = start
r = range + 1
while true do
if c == r then
c = start
end
rednet.set(c)
rednet.broadcast("ping")
x = nil
x,y,z = rednet.receive(.05)
if x ~= nil then
print(x..": "..y.." :distance to ["..z.."]".."on frequency:"..c)
end
c = c + 1
end

[JJRcop]

I like the idea with frequency. I do not like the current system with computercraft being impossible to hack. You cannot listen into data, you can easily
prevent spoofing. It's terrible.

I do not like what people are saying about this being optional. Computercraft in multiplayer servers will be so much more fun if everyone is required to use this. Otherwise nobody will use it.

(Cranium, I want to come over to where you live and yell at you, telling you how selfish you are..)
EDIT: I thought cranium liked having CC's bulletproof rednet, and I was mistaken; he was talking about backwards compatibility.

Edited by JJRcop, 30 November 2012 - 10:37 AM.

[Cranium]

JJRcop, on 30 November 2012 - 10:18 AM, said:

I like the idea with frequency. I do not like the current system with computercraft being impossible to hack. You cannot listen into data, you can easily
prevent spoofing. It's terrible.

I do not like what people like Cranium are saying about this being optional. Computercraft in multiplayer servers will be so much more fun if everyone is required to use this. Otherwise nobody will use it.

(Cranium, I want to come over to where you live and yell at you, telling you how selfish you are..)

I see wut u did thar....
But I only meant that for existing programs being able to run as they previously did. I have a mail system that broadcasts a ping, listens for a response, then homes in on that response and uses that ID to send to from that point on. My suggestion was just to say that if someone uses rednet.broadcast(), it would just do the same thing, like sending on all frequencies. I know that there are several systems that rely on broadcast in one form or another, and I don;t think that everyone wants to recode just so they can keep using ther programs. (since it's usually something one person wrote, and modifying it might screw things up). It would only be a modification of rednet.broadcast.

[JJRcop]

I didn't think of that. I had the wrong idea. I thought you were one of those people that didn't want this because you liked how CC's rednet was unhackable.

I apologize and I am sorry.

[GopherAtl]

cranium, with the system dan proposed and I described earlier, all existing code would still work without modification, it just wouldn't be perfectly secure anymore. removing broadcast would break code that uses it, but if you can send on any arbitrary range, as I believe was also planned, you could just send on all frequencies to achieve the same effect - which of course makes removing broadcast a symbolic victory at best...

[tom2018]

Cranium, on 30 November 2012 - 10:29 AM, said:

JJRcop, on 30 November 2012 - 10:18 AM, said:

I like the idea with frequency. I do not like the current system with computercraft being impossible to hack. You cannot listen into data, you can easily
prevent spoofing. It's terrible.

I do not like what people like Cranium are saying about this being optional. Computercraft in multiplayer servers will be so much more fun if everyone is required to use this. Otherwise nobody will use it.

(Cranium, I want to come over to where you live and yell at you, telling you how selfish you are..)

I see wut u did thar....
But I only meant that for existing programs being able to run as they previously did. I have a mail system that broadcasts a ping, listens for a response, then homes in on that response and uses that ID to send to from that point on. My suggestion was just to say that if someone uses rednet.broadcast(), it would just do the same thing, like sending on all frequencies. I know that there are several systems that rely on broadcast in one form or another, and I don;t think that everyone wants to recode just so they can keep using ther programs. (since it's usually something one person wrote, and modifying it might screw things up). It would only be a modification of rednet.broadcast.

my idea is that it would just run on the default frequency of 0
and not on all

[ChunLing]

The current system is not unhackable. If you think it is, then you don't have any cred as a hacker anyway, so why bother?

I do like the idea of having an interface that lets you add a frequency parameter to rednet messages, so that only receivers with that frequency set on a modem can get that message. But it is physically possible (and necessary, in modern telecommunications) to beam messages so that only the intended receiver gets them. Hackers who want to break into such systems have to deal with proximity issues all the time, how to get physically close enough to a vulnerable part of the network.

[Cranium]

tom2018, on 30 November 2012 - 11:17 AM, said:

my idea is that it would just run on the default frequency of 0
and not on all

So If you use rednet.broadcast, it would just be on frequency 0, and rednet.receive with no parameters would also listen only on 0. That way, existing programs would still be able to run as they were.

[Lyqyd]

tom2018, on 30 November 2012 - 11:17 AM, said:

my idea is that it would just run on the default frequency of 0
and not on all

No, broadcast would be basically rednet.send("0-65536", "message") or whatever the maximum frequency ends up being.

[PixelToast]

tom2018, on 30 November 2012 - 09:57 AM, said:

well it would not be hard to hack... you have it automatically scan trough all possible frequencies.
in this example rednet.set is frequency setter
-snippy pixel-

not using my method above ^.^
after you get a shared key you can use a symmetric encryption algorithm using the shared secret as the key

thats why i said this sould be optional as people who dont know anything about those types of things will be prone to people spying on their port

[Doyle3694]

I definetly second this idea.

[Cloudy]

I personally don't like the idea of sending on a range - broadcast was for when you couldn't communicate with more than one computer at once. Once frequencies come in, you will be able to.

[JJRcop]

Cloudy, can you tell us if this may be optional or not? We would really like to know.
I would personally prefer it to not be optional.

[D3matt]

If we're going to have it possible to listen in on frequencies now, I think we need LAN cables added to the game, similar to using RP2 cables, but not so horribly slow and laggy.

[Sebra]

Oh, I'm afraid developers going to break working things
Now it is impossible to protect computers from external startup Soon no link will be safe
Do not force other players to play the way, you want. Crypto-programs is unneeded load for servers and problems with trust. -> less fun