ipc: dde

[Peter Hansen]

Carlos Gaston Alvarez wrote:
> "Peter Hansen" <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> > Carlos Gaston Alvarez wrote:
> > >
> > > I am doing a python applicaction in Windows. I need a 
> > > graphical application written in C++ to comunicate with it.
> > > Opening ports is not acceptable.
> >
> > I'm curious _why_ opening ports is not considered acceptable.
> > Is this thought to be a security problem or something?
> 
> It will be running on many machines which are not mine so I dont know the
> kind of problems that may happen because of that. I dont know, may be a
> firewall or another application using that port.
> They comunicate in the same machine so I dont know if firewalls are
> aplicable.

You refer to 'that port', but it would be possible to choose 
any port, including the non-reserved higher numbered ones.
Since you wouldn't be using one of the standard services,
presumably, you could pick any available port, or reserve one.

I suppose firewalls could block sockets opened to the same 
machine, but I'd be surprised to find many machines not run 
by security gurus which prevented connections from 
127.0.0.1 to 127.0.0.1 (local loopback).

And of course my original point was that sockets do *not*
have to listen on all interfaces, and it's quite possible
and acceptable to bind a socket to _only_ the local 127.0.0.1 
interface, thereby eliminating the need for a firewall 
to protect this particular form IPC.

-- 
----------------------
Peter Hansen, P.Eng.
peter at engcorp.com