Security

This page explains several features (currently only one - but in the future more) that Gandanur provides to increase the security and protection of your server.

Data Execution Prevention

A heads up: if you don't understand what this command does, in all likelihood you won't need it.

You can enable Data Execution Prevention (DEP) by executing the command sv_dep_enable. Once enabled it cannot be disabled (and that's a good thing security wise). The minimum requirements for sv_dep_enable to work is Windows Vista with SP1 or Windows XP with SP3 and higher, or Windows Server 2008 and higher. For older operating systems you will get a "Failed to find GetProcessDEPPolicy" error message.

As stated in the NSA Fact Sheet: Computer attackers commonly use buffer overflow exploits to gain access to computer systems. Many of these malicious code exploits can be prevented with Data Execution Prevention (DEP), a security feature available in modern operating systems. DEP provides protection for all memory that is not specifically marked as executable code. With DEP enabled, if a memory corruption is detected, the operating system terminates the application before the system can be compromised.

For a halo server administrator this is good because if a malicious individual would find a buffer overflow exploit and attack your server with it, he/she will not be able to run arbitrary code on your server. In practice this means that an attack will not be able to, for example, make your server run code that would send the rcon password back to the attacker. Instead the operating system will detect a memory error and close the server down. Remember that it's better that the server closes instead of being taken over by a hacker!

Remember that DEP only protects against certain buffer overflow attacks and not all possible exploits.

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