Suggestions on how to manage/authenticate users

[SeltsamerHerr]

Hi there!

I am working on some tools in AHK and am asked to share it with different people. I would like to have a way to avoid people passing around and using my software without my permission. I know that the AHK source code can be easily recovered and altered, but for an average user wrapping it in an exe and compressing it (e.g. with mpress) should be sufficient to keep it "safe enough". Now I imagine having a way to authenticate users, e.g. with email address and password. Does anyone know a way to use some kind of authentication service (and include it in the AHK program)? I do not have my own server to set up sth. and this program will not be of any commercial significance.

I really appreciate any idea and feedback as I don't have any knowledge in this area!

Thanks!

[MaxAstro]

If the computers are not all on the same network, doing this with AHK will be fairly complicated. If they are on the same network, you can just have the program go over the network to read the contents of a particular file for the userlist.

I'm sure it's possible to do the same thing over FTP, but probably harder and you'd almost certainly need your own website to upload the file to.

[tankuser]

You need to implement the same thing that all authentication methods do.
A secure server with credentials to validate
a communication protocol such as HTTP
a cryptographicly secure token based on the response from the secure server with the necessary cryptography to validate legitimacy. Diffie–Hellman is common
You could embed a browser and log into a web site as a simple implementation or write all the components yourself

[SeltsamerHerr]

@MaxAstro: The setting would not be in the same network
@tankuser: I was looking for ideas to avoid the overhead of implementing all this myself.
Using an integrated browser sounds like a great idea! I guess it could work with an authentication service like Okta then. I will have to look into this further....
Do you have any suggestions for an as simple as possible integrated browser? I found this as a working example:
https://autohotkey.com/board/topic/5698 ... ntry396534

[tankuser]

That looks like some solid code to me.