I love the mush client and just have downloaded the 4.2 version. With me recently noticing allot of port scans. I became paranoid and was wondering if mush and all mud clients can be used as an easy access around my firewall into my computer?
I glanced at the sum check section and that will verify If I download mush and mush alone right? That too is what step by step does a non programmer do. Remember I just glanced at the forum section tips and tricks. So if it is deeper in please forgive me.
I hope I am being paranoid for nothing, but that is why I came here to get it from the horse's mouth and/or people that know programming.
Typically a MUD client will not be a way to get into your computer, because you are making connections out, and people aren't connecting to you. Of course, if the client has some particularly horrible, atrocious bug (or a bad plugin that you installed), it might be possible to get in by sending a special sequence of characters, but the probability of that is pretty much as close to zero as you can get (unless of course you installed a bad plugin).
The checksum is indeed how you would check that you downloaded the right thing, although I wouldn't know how to verify it on Windows (on Linux it's fairly easy).
But that isn't meant as a security feature: it's meant to make sure you got the data correctly from a source you trust.
If I am able to interfere with your connection and have you download something you didn't ask for, then I can also interfere with your connection to give you the wrong checksum.
The downloads page mentions where you can get the sumcheck program - or you can write a small plugin to do it.
The sumcheck is intended to be used to make sure you have got a good copy if you download it from this site, or some other site. If from another site, there is a possibility they have injected a trojan or virus - the sumcheck should confirm that hasn't happened.
I agree with David that, as a MUD client generally makes outwards connections (unless you have set up as a chat server) , you are perfectly safe. You can crank the firewall up to high, and there should be no problems.
Thank you both for the reassurances. I will also download the checksum program , though I doubt that it will say anything but I got the correct versions. Again thanks. Never looked at forums in the past just downloaded it and used it. You guys got some pretty interesting things here. Thanks again for the info and mush client.
So I Start here and download the programming language.
http://www.lua.org/
Then cut and past the first check sum script.
I think thats the way to go. But I don't want to do what I did last time get a virus and malware from downloading everything I could find to prevent viruses and malware.