FDS box communication tools

[rantanplan]

I have been working on some tools to communicate with a Renegade/mod FDS box. On the one hand, I worked on an Android app that allows you to send FDS commands to a game server and get the response. Besides that, the logs that the box create for bot regulators (tt scripts) can also be displayed at the screen. On the other hand, I worked on the same tool but as a web app, where you can do the same through a web browser.

For this tools to work the ports must be open in the game server, what could be a security breach with a not properly configured firewall or deactivated. After working on this tools I realized that the port that is used for the bot logs is freely accepting FDS commands, not sure if this was done on purpose. Why tools like brenbot are not communicating this way with the box, which would be more efficient and at the same time safe as the bot is usually working locally? Remote admin port needs no further configuration because messages are encoded, but anyway it would be a good idea blocking not allowed connections.

[danpaul88]

Brenbot long, long predates the existence of the logging port, by at least 10 years. It's been on my back burner to also send command via that port but it's never been a high priority since it all runs locally anyway.

 

There is even a comment I left in the source code suggesting it could use it;

https://gitlab.com/danpaul88/brenbot/-/blob/master/Source/fds.pm#L37