Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations MikeeOK on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Protecting Report Connection Information

Status
Not open for further replies.

tennisguy

Instructor
May 5, 2003
26
US
In Crystal 8.5 Pro (and perhaps earlier versions), you can open a *.rpt file in Windows Notepad, and in all of the jibberish that displays, you can find the field names used in the report, the directory path used to locate your database file or database server, login information (username & password -- this according to student), etc.

Would there be any way to mask this information or to have Crystal not display it in something as simple as a text document? The student was concerned that a hacker or someone could gain access to the network, locate Crystal report files in a shared folder on the network, open those reports in Notepad, and record usernames and passwords that belong to network users who created or last modified those Crystal report files stored in the shared folder.

Any ideas would be welcomed. Thanks...
 
Sounds like an industrious student ;-)

I am not at a machine right now to see for sure, but I don't suspect the Password would be recoverable from a Notpad viewing since the password is not stored with the .rpt file.

It is true that you could locate the UserID and DSN used for the report, since these are stored in the .rpt file.

There shouldn't be anything in this that would allow someone to gain access to the network.

It does pose an interesting question however and of course it may cost a few winks this eve.

It is easily tested though, so maybe someone a machine with CR and a datasource that requires a log in could run a test.

Run the report, save it with data and view it in notepad. Search for "DSN". The userid and password should be relatively close by.


Cheers,

SurfingGecko
Home of Crystal Ease
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top