<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2719.2200" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Hello all,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>If anyone participating in the beta test is using
the --host option on the command line for the server program, I recommend that
you do so with caution. Specifying an Internet accessible address for this
command line option exposes the admin tool to the Internet and that isn't
necessarily a good thing. Since the admin tool doesn't employ passwords or
encryption of any kind, anyone attempting to connect to the IP address and port
specified will be granted full access to the game server. Because of this,
I strongly recommend that you use the default setting of "localhost" because it
will keep your server much more secure.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I originally added this option to allow
administrators to specify internal IP's for multi-homed systems. If
you do decide to use the --host option, only specify an IP
address that is either limited to a non-public pool or not routed to
the Internet in any way. If you require remote access to your server, use
a client utility that employs the SSH2 protocol to connect to the game
server. Once connected, your communications traffic will be encrypted and
you are free to use local addressing to run the programs. Linux has an
SSH client pre-installed, but if you are using a Windows PC you will
need to download a utility like PuTTY to accomplish the same
thing. It's free and available here:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><A
href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/">http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>My father once told me, "A little paranoia
goes a long way." If you're just a little paranoid about the potential
danger of using this option, I'm sure it will go a long way towards keeping you
out of harm's way.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Shockwave</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>