Protocols are ways for computers to communicate. This is fairly fundamentally in opposition to your aim of security through obscurity - they don't know what language you're speaking, therefore they cannot hack it.

You'll filter out _most_ of your automated attacks, by simply moving services onto another port. For everything else, you'll need the same security/authentication layers that you'll need anyway.

What are you really trying to achieve? Reduced bot traffic? Just move ports. Even if you use a new protocol (which for a lot of reasons, isn't a good idea) then there will still be packets from the bots, bouncing off your firewall. So you might as well just run your webserver on a different port, and block all traffic on port 80. It'll achieve pretty much the same result - firewall can easily reject the traffic based on the port number.

If you're thinking your new protocol will improve security, then ... well, there's an old adage: Security through obscurity, isn't. It's all well and good to work on the basis that if people don't know that you're using some unusual protocol, then they can't get in, but the fact that this protocol is going 'out onto the net' means it is impossible to guarantee that. And therefore, you still need to authenticate etc. everyone, and have an additional layer of complexity for your end users.


In reply to Re^3: How to implement a fourth protocol by Preceptor
in thread How to implement a fourth protocol by Moron

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