Earlier lessons discussed briefly some of the processes involved in downloading controls via the Internet, and the security threats posed by the shared nature of the Internet. In this chapter, you will learn about the actual process of installing
Internet components and a few ways to prevent the installation of unwanted code or content. This process involves three stages:
The following sections of this chapter define these steps, and describe, in greater detail, the various application program interfaces (APIs) that apply to them.
ActiveX objects within an HTML document go through several stages before they are installed on a user's local machine.
The first step, the downloading or acquisition of the component, can happen in a couple of different ways. A few of these ways (as they relate to the Web) were discussed earlier, ( when installing an application such as Internet Explorer, for
instance). Remember however, in this network-centric lesson, that ActiveX controls can be installed via floppy disks, data tape, and so on. The usual method of installing these components, however, is from within an HTML document via an ActiveX Web
browser—using the <OBJECT> tag.
The second step, verification , can use any or none of the following steps (installation and component downloading) to ensure that the control will not act maliciously on your system. Because the verification process is not mandatory, each individual
user, programmer and administrator must decide which, if any, of the processes will be used.
The third step, installation, depends on which selected verification process the control has successfully passed through. Even if a control has no programmed security features, users will be prompted on whether or not they wish to install that object.
This is because objects with no security features cannot identify themselves as safe.
Not every installed object is necessarily be an OLE object. When the object is an OLE control, there are several considerations for ensuring its integrity.
There are two primary HTML tags that can be used to download an item from the Internet : <OBJECT> and HREF.
Minimal security via ActiveX is available within the HREF tag because HREF is treated as a hyperlink rather than an OLE object. An example of this would be a CGI server script; the hypertext reference would look like the following:
<A HREF="http://www.domain.net/CGIScript.exe">CGI Script</A>
The browser, treating CGIScript.exe as a hyperlinked document, would download and launch the .EXE without conducting any real security activity.
To enable the majority of ActiveX security features, you must identify an item as an object. (CGI scripts are not normally OLE objects). Identify the item as an OLE object using the <OBJECT> tag.
URL
ActiveX Gallery
http://www.www.microsoft.com/activex/gallery
This site is Microsoft's display gallery for their ActiveX controls. You can observe the code download and verification processes in action as you download the controls from this site.
After identifying an object via the <OBJECT> tag (and setting its parameters if necessary), use the CodeBase attribute of the <OBJECT> tag to inform the user's system of the location of the control. The format of the Code attribute closely
resembles the format for any URL:
CODEBASE="http://www.domain.net/control.ocx"
As time goes by, computer programs are either phased out or, preferably, upgraded. This can cause some problems with conflicting versions of the same control. When a software manufacturer decides to upgrade its control, applications or scripts written
around that code might not work with versions other than the one for which it was written. To manage the installation of different versions of the same control, the Code attribute enables content providers (HTML authors) to specify which version their page
needs.
This version identification information is tacked onto the end of the Code URL in bold in the following example:
CODEBASE="http://www.domain.net/control.ocx#Version=1,2,3"
Using this attribute, you can identify all versions for which your application is usable. If your application was written for Version 1 and is still usable with Versions 2 and 3, the preceding example is how you should format the attribute. If the user
has Version 1 installed on his machine, his browser will attempt to obtain the most recent version specified (here, Version 3) when it hits this tag.
Backwards Compatibility
For the most part, software vendors try to keep their products backwards compatible. This allows users of the product to perform minimum modifications to their programs when a control is upgraded. One example of this is the evolution of Visual Basic.
Basic began gaining wide acceptance before object-oriented programming was very popular. These early versions of Basic used line numbers and REM statements. During this time, the first major burst of growth in the training, education and employment of programmers was occurring. As a result, the bolus of programmers used these features to identify the location of subroutines, or to identify a line of text as a comment, to be ignored by the compiler.
As Visual Basic came into being, REM statements were replaced by the apostrophe ('), and the use of line numbers to maintain the sequence in which code was to be executed became obsolete.
To maintain backwards compatibility, the choice between long and short commands was made an option. A programmer could use the simple apostrophe to identify a remark, or he could use the REM statement. To the compiler, they are the same. Line numbers also became optional.
By allowing programmers to use these conventions, Microsoft ensured that a programmer who spent days or months or years developing an application could still use all or most of his code in the new programming environment. This is backwards compatibility .
There are several types of objects that can be used as ActiveX objects within the <OBJECT> tag of an HTML document. Each object has its own specific features and drawbacks:
Note
For you hard-core hackers out there, the compression type used for .CAB files is based on the Lempel-Ziv compression algorithm. This is a "lossles" algorithm that was developed in 1977. Where some other compression algorithms look for whitespace, Lempel-Ziv looks for repeated binary sequences. Then it uses an offset value to refer to the first instance of the sequence.
About the time Windows95 was released, users began seeing .CAB files on a variety of Microsoft products' installation disks. The ActiveX SDK includes a tool, diantz.exe which is used to create these active archives. Active means that the
archives have more power and utility than the previously popular shareware compression standards (such as ZIP, LZH, ARJ, ARC, XX_ and so on).
URL
Cabinet Developer's Newsgroup
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.internetexplorer.java.cabdevkit
Microsoft maintains a newsgroup forum where individuals discuss issues related to .CABinet development. Answers to unique problems, as well as pointers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) can be had in this newsgroup.
With the CABView utility (available in the Windows95 PowerToys on the enclosed CD), users can double click a CABinet file to make their system view and treat the archive as a subdirectory of its current directory. Drag and drop, execution of PEs, and
file editing are all supported within a CABinet.
If a .CAB file has an .INF file in it, it can inform the user's systems of all necessary information to install the control onto the local machine.
Warning The .CAB file should only have one .INF file in it if it is to be used as a self-installing ActiveX object. If the cabinet contains two .INF files, undesirable and unpredictable results may occur.
Now you're going to learn how to use Microsoft's two command-line utilities for working with cabinet file compression—Diantz.exe and Extract.exe. These can be found in the \InetSDK\bin directory.
Diantz.exe is the utility for creating .CAB files . It's very easy to use from a prompt. Simply follow .exe with the name of the file you want to add to a cabinet, and the name of the cabinet to which you want the compressed file added.
The Diantz Utility
Diantz source destination Diantz /F directive_file
The Diantz utility is used to create and update compressed file .CABinets.
There are two methods that can be used with this utility. The first is to add files one by one like so:
Diantz.exe MyFile.dat MyCab.cab
This would add MyFile.dat to MyCab.cab, creating MyCab.cab if it doesn't already exist. If you don't specify a .CABinet file, it'll just compress the file alone, and name the compressed file the same as the original, except that the last character will be an underscore (_).
The other way is to use a directive file on the command line like so:
Diantz.exe /F MyDirec.ddf
This will build the .CABinet according to the instructions in the Diamond directives file (MyDirec.ddf).
Several other command-line parameters can be used with either of these methods, including
- /V#—Where # is the level of verbosity (1-3)
- /D VAR=MyValue—this sets the environment variable VAR to the value in MyValue
- /L DIR—where DIR is the destination directory for the archive
Hint
The name of the file in the InetSDK is Diantz.exe, but if you type the .EXE name alone at a prompt, you will see that it returns the help information for a command called Diamond.exe. You might want to rename Diantz.exe to Diamond.exe because that's the file's "real" name.
This is the utility used for extracting files from a .CAB file. It is also very simple to use from a prompt. Just follow .exe with the name of the .CABinet from which you want a file extracted, and the name of file.
The Extract Utility
Extract cabinet file
The Extract utility is used to extract files from compressed file .CABinets. To use it, follow the executable name with the name of the compressed cabinet and the name of the file you wish to extract, like so:
Extract.exe MyCab.cab MyFile.datThis will extract the file MyFile.dat from the cabinet MyCab.cab.
Let’s try an example of the Diantz.exe and Extract.exe cabinet manipulation utilities.
First, create a direcotry within which to work. Let'suse a directory called \CabZip\ on the C drive.
Note
You can find an example of the files with which we will be working on the CD-ROM in a similarly named directory.
Next, make sure that the Diamond compression utility (Diantz.exe) is available within this directory. Since this utility is in the \INetSDK\Bin\ directory, just make sure it’s in the path. To verify that Diantz.exe is in the path and available
from within any directory, type path at the DOS command prompt. If you do not see the \INetSDK\Bin\ in the list of directories returned by the path statement, add a line to your autoexec.bat file as follows:
path=%path%;C:\Dev\InetSDK\Bin
This appends the \InetSDK\Bin\ directory to your default program search path. Make sure this statement is on a line after all other path statements in your autoexec.bat. This ensures other directories are searched first. This way, as your programs
become updated (and they will!), the \INetSDK\Bin\ directory will be the last place your system looks for a program that it can’t find elsewhere.
The next step is to copy the files from the CD-ROM into this new directory. The files are listed in the following table:
| (DOS) FileName | Long FileName |
| ACTIVEX.CCC | ActiveX.ccc |
| ALICE1.JPG | Alice1.jpg |
| CHESHIRE.AVI | Cheshire.avi |
| RESUME.DOC | resume.doc |
| ANDTHA~1.WAV | and that's done with.wav |
| OFFICE95.XLS | Office95.xls |
| OLE-OC~1.MCC | OLE-OCX ActiveX Programming.mcc |
| VBINTE~1.URL | VB Internet Controls News.url |
| COPYME.TXT | copyme.txt |
Next, create a cabinet for each file. Place each file in its own cabinet to observe the compression ratios for the different kinds of files.
Note
This demonstration shows that text-based and bitmapped files compress very well. On the other hand, binary files, such as audio applications, don’t compress as well. Also, once you have created a cabinet (or used any other form of compression on a file), you will not be able to compress it again to reduce it further.
To make this compression process go a little faster, you can create the following batch file (a sample has already been created on the CD-ROM called CabZip.bat):
diantz /v3 "ActiveX.ccc" activex.cab diantz /v3 "Alice1.jpg" alice1.cab diantz /v3 "Cheshire.avi" Cheshire.cab diantz /v3 "resume.doc" resume.cab diantz /v3 "Office95.xls" Office95.cab diantz /v3 "OLE-OCX ActiveX Programming.mcc" "OLE-OCX ActiveX Programming.cab" diantz /v3 "VB Internet Controls News.url" "VB Internet Controls News.cab" diantz /v3 "and that's done with.wav" "and that's done with.cab"
Note
Notice the quotation marks (") around some of the files. When working from a DOS command prompt, it is often necessary to place these marks around files with long filenames, long file extensions, case sensitivity and embedded spaces.
Next, extract each one of the cabinet files. If you extract them into the current directory (where copies already exist), you will be prompted as to whether you wish to overwrite the current copy or not. To automate this process, create a batch file
with the following command (a copy of this batch file, named CabUnZip.bat is in the \CabZip\ directory on the CD-ROM):
for %%x in (ACTIVEX.CAB ALICE1.CAB CHESHIRE.CAB RESUME.CAB OFFICE95.CAB OLE-OC~1.CAB VBINTE~1.CAB ANDTHA~1.CAB) do extract.exe %%x
Type the whole thing on one line. Perform this function from the command prompt as well as from within a batch file. From a prompt, replace the batch variable identifier (%%) with a command line variable identifier (%).
The .OCX, .EXE and .DLL files are referred, collectively, as PE (Portable Executable) files. These files are the simplest to use as ActiveX controls because they require no other files (that is, they are standalone utilities) and they can be run
automatically.
A PE cannot be cross-platform compatible. It can only run on the machine type for which it was compiled. For this reason, content providers who use PEs as embedded objects need to consider the type of machine with which their users will be accessing
the document.
Over a distributed environment such as the Internet, these BLOBs (Binary Large Objects) can take a long time to download. If the code is tight, or the file is compressed using a compression algorithm, this significantly reduces the amount of time it
takes to download them. But if the file is compressed, it can not be self-executing. It must first be uncompressed, or returned to its original form. The exception to this is .CAB files—they can be self-executing when used as ActiveX objects.
.INF files are used to tell the local machine how to setup the control and where to get its components. By specifying the files that various machines might need (such as Mac, UNIX, Win95), the .INF file can be used to install a different package for
each type of system.
These .INF files are very similar to the old .INI (INItialization) files.
; Setup File for Sample.INF
[Add Code]
sample.ocx=sample.ocx
sample.dll=sample.dll
[sample.ocx]
file=http://www.domain.net/sample.ocx
clsid={xxxxxxx-xxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}
fileversion=1,0,0,0
destdir=11
file_win32_x86= http://www.domain.net/win32.cab
file_win32_mips= http://www.domain.net/winNT.cab
file_mac_ppc= http://www.domain.net/mac.cab
[sample.dll]
file=sample.dll
destdir=10
file_win32_x86= http://www.domain.net/win32.cab
file_win32_mips= http://www.domain.net/winNT.cab
file_mac_ppc= http://www.domain.net/mac.cab
Referring to the preceding sample .INF file, note that when launched by an ActiveX browser, the commands within an .INF file would install two files: sample.ocx and sample.dll. The .OCX would be retrieved from www.domain.net, while the .DLL would come
from the same directory as the .INF (because no external site or directory was specified). The destdir setting has 2 options: 10 for the Windows directory, and 11 for the Windows\System directory. If no destination directory is specified, the control is
kept in a cache until purged by automatic (that is space-saving) or manual means.
You can also see in the sample that the file version is 1.0.0.0 (note that commas are used instead of dots in the .INF file version settings). If the machine has version 0.9 installed, it will still download the newer version. If, however, the local
machine has a newer version, 1.0.1.0 for instance, it will not bother to install the older version. That would be a bug.
An attribute of the <OBJECT> tag, called the CODETYPE attribute , can be used to further inform the system about the object's requirements. CODETYPE identifies the object's MIME type. An example of the CODETYPE attribute, defining an audio-video
interface animation would look like this:
CODETYPE="video/avi"
ActiveX uses another MIME type to identify the machine for which the code was written.
This feature of the Code tag is perhaps one of the most exciting. The Holy Grail of programming has been the use of one program on a variety of systems. Although this is still not possible (and probably never will be), features of the Code tag do allow
the user's machine to retrieve a copy of the control, designed for the user's individual system—whether it is a Mac, UNIX box, PC, or whatever. The format for this is a MIME type that conforms to the following specification:
application/x-FileType_OS_CPU
where the options for each field include:
FileType - pe, cabinet or setupscript OS - win32 or mac CPU - x86, ppc, mips or alpha
Referring to the preceding sample, note that this MIME type format is extended to allow an .INF file to specify which files would be required on different machines. In this example, the controls for a Win95 MIPS machine would be in Win95.cab, the
controls for a WinNT Alpha machine would be in WinNT.cab and the controls for a Macintosh are in MAC.cab. In each case, the entire cabinet would be downloaded, but only the necessary files would be installed. Also, it keeps a Mac from having to download
the code for a PC and vice-versa.
The threats to system security manifest themselves in three items: OLE objects, non-OLE objects, and document content. The first two are of primary significance to the system developer. The last, document content, allows parents, employers and other
individuals to determine the type of content their users view, without actually censoring every item their users can access—an impossible task.
Prior to ActiveX, the installation and configuration of software was completely controlled by the user or his system administrator. Now, through simply looking at a Web page, a control or other object can find its way to the user's machine with very
little user interaction. This exposes the user to the threat of malicious or simply undesirable code being installed on their local machine.
Warning Internet Explorer, Netscape, and most other browsers allow the users, not the system administrator, to select the level of security they wish to observe. Internet Explorer ships with the highest level of security enabled by default.
Some users disable their security features to avoid those pesky confirmation dialog boxes. You might want to think twice before disabling any of them.
Although a determined hacker can still create a Web page that gives the user this kind of grief, the use of ActiveX security measures helps ensure that the developer of the code is identifiable. In the event that the developer's software creates an
undesirable effect, the user will have information to contact him and inform him of his code's apparent bugs.
Another feature of ActiveX security is that it allows users to determine whether they want to install a piece of code in the first place. If the control does not have security features enabled, the user is told that the code might not be safe, and
prompts him as to whether or not he wants it installed on his machine. If the security features are enabled, it gives the user's machine certain information about the code and its developer, and that information is verified over the Net through certifying
authorities such as Dun & Bradstreet or GTE.
See trust verification in action when you visit Microsoft’s ActiveX control site at http://www.microsoft.com/activex/controls. When you download a page with an ActiveX control that is not
already installed on your system, Internet Explorer begins downloading the control to your cache (see Figure 17.1). When the control has been retrieved, another window pops up, asking if you want to install the control and informing you of any security
certificates it contains (see Figure 17.2).
Figure 17.1. When downloading an ActiveX control, several things happen in Internet Explorer.
Figure 17.2. After an ActiveX control is downloaded, a pop-up window appears.
URL
Verisign Certification
http://www.verisign.com
Companies such as Verisign have Web sites set up to allow individuals and companies to use their trust verification services to issue and validate digital IDs.
Finally, ActiveX security has a feature called Internet Ratings , which provides a degree of parental, administrator or employer control to define which sites are not to be accessed by their users. Web page developers can place code within their HTML
pages or their ActiveX controls to inform systems that attempt access about the any risque[as] content on that page. Administrators can then determine what level of freedom their users have in accessing pages with various levels of violent or sexual
content.
On the enclosed CD-ROM, a directory called \Ratings\ contains several HTML files. If you load the ratings.html file into Internet Explorer, you can view different pages with the ratings system enabled on them. For more information about having your
site rated, you should contact a ratings service.
When you buy a software product off the shelf at your local store, you have certain assurances that the product will perform as stated on the box. This assurance (or "Implied Warranty of Merchantability") comes in the form of a product logo.
Microsoft uses a very high-tech hologram to mark its products. If a knock-off artist wants to copy a Microsoft product and sell it on shelves, he would need more than a simple printing press—he'd need a hologram copying program as well (or a box of
Microsoft hologram stickers).
This logo-on-a-box method is not as easy to do with software that is distributed via the Net. Instead, several other methods of verifying security come into play in ActiveX programming. Information for verifying authenticity and integrity is contained
within the object itself. It might come in the form of X.509 security certificates or other embedded information.
Microsoft's Base Security Layer SDK provides the means whereby a control can be certified as safe. This happens through the System Certificate Store. I will only briefly discuss the System Certificate Store here. The full specification can be found in
the ActiveX SDK in the \INetSDK\Help\Security\BSLH Directory.
When you download and install code that has a Certificate of Authenticity, this software vendor's certificate is stored in the local machine's System Certificate Store. Certificates from a variety of vendors can be found here.
Some of the API calls for accessing this store are as follows:
Using these API calls, a programmer can query the Base Security Layer for the existence of a security certificate, and retrieve the information within that certificate to validate a control or controls as authentic. This certificate is used by the
trust verification service.
Trust verification service is the set of API calls that determines whether a requested object can be trusted. It provides features whereby a trust administrator can define what is and is not allowed to be installed on a machine.
It also provides a means whereby the administrator of a system can define the types of processes, controls and other objects that will be allowed. Although the security certificate will provide information about an object, it is still up to the trust
administrator to make the final call.
To take advantage of trust-verification services, the trust administrator must work with a trust provider. This provider maintains a server or group of servers that provides authentication of certificates. This provider determines the methods used in
validating a certificate, thus freeing users and their system administrators from the complexities of producing and verifying trust certificates.
When an application on a user's machine attempts to use an object that requires trust verification, the service contacts the software provider, their agent and/or any other trust providers to validate or update the certificate.
Now that you know a little about the behind-the-scenes processes used to identify safe objects, let's go into how local users and administrators can implement these features in their own systems. As I stated earlier, security of all kinds boil down to
a few basic features: UserID, Password and, occasionally, physical location. Still, these can be very powerful when any or all of them are kept secret.
The Safety API has its first implementation in the Microsoft Internet Explorer. Users can designate the degree of security they wish to observe by selecting the Security tab of the View|Options menu in MSIE and pressing the Programs button (see Figure
17.3). The three options are
Figure 17.3. Internet Explorer configuration menu to select the level of security.
The complexities of ActiveX security boil down to two basic questions:
The Safety API provides the means to evaluate these hazards during creation and initialization.
When creating an OLE control , programmers define a set of interfaces with which they want that control to operate.
An example of this type of safe control is the Marquee control. Its only function is to display animated text in a box. There is no way for this cutesy little display to harm your machine, so it is safe with any code.
An example of a potentially unsafe control is the SMTP control from the Internet Control Pack. This control could be scripted to send an e-mail resignation letter to your boss, or worse—your spouse!
To identify the control as safe for scripting, add it to the CATID_SafeForScripting Component Category in the system registry. Additionally, you can add code to the control's internal registration and unregistration routines to ensure its management in
the proper Component Category.
Controls go through several phases, each having its own risks and strengths.
When controls are first created (or initialized) on a system, certain properties define them. In turn, these properties are defined by the data from an IPersist* interface. The data in this interface can come from just about anywhere, including some
remote server.
The danger here is twofold: the control can initialize in an undesirable way, or worse, it can send your private data to an untrusted system.
To identify the control as safe for initializing, add it to the CATID_SafeForInitializing Component Category in the system registry.
A more versatile, although higher level, method that works with registry settings is the IObjectSafety interface . In addition to marking a control as safe or unsafe, it can be manipulated programmatically to command a control to change its safety
level.
To make a control safe for initializing, set the SetInterfaceSafetyOptions of this interface to INTERFACE_SAFE_FOR_UNTRUSTED_CALLER.
To make a control safe for scripting, set the SetInterfaceSafetyOptions of this interface to INTERFACE_SAFE_FOR_UNTRUSTED_DATA.
Of course, a particularly brilliant and malicious programmer can build, rebuild, or reverse-engineer any control to report itself as safe for scripting, and cause all kinds of damage. That makes trust verification of the source of the control all the
more important.
The ActiveX SDK includes a set of tools to assist the programmer in signing code as safe. This reduces the preceding complex steps to a few simple steps. This kit helps the programmer certify PEs, cabinets, controls and class files.
This tool kit uses public key encryption and digital signatures to determine both the true source of a control and the integrity of that control (because it was released by the source). The following details each step required for signing a control as
safe.
Do/Don't
Do—Use the MakeCert Utility to generate pretend certificates.
Don't—Continue to use the MakeCert Utility after you obtain a real certificate from an LRA or CA.
Figure 17.4. The processes behind public key encryption go through many levels to ensure integrity.
Public Key Encryption
To be confident that your code is safe, you should know a little about the theory and process behind public key encryption. It is actually little more than a password-protected password. You must know the first password (the public key) to get the second password (the private key). The process is shown graphically in Figure 17.2.
As simple as that sounds, its use over the last five years has prompted several government agencies to consider restricting it.
In simple terms, public key encryption takes an item through several steps:
- A user makes up a password—this can be as small as a word or as large as a passage from a book.
- The user creates an object that he wishes to encrypt, such as a letter to his bank.
- The user invokes a routine that creates a cross-section (or hash) of the object. This routine (such as an RSA scheme) might read every 4th character, or every even-numbered character on every other odd-numbered line or some such algorithm. (In reality, encryption schemes are much more complex!) The hash then becomes that object's "digital signature."
- Because the object and the password are combined to create the signature, each object generates a unique signature and, if the object is altered, its signature changes. A talented vandal can use the public key to generate a new signature and the end user has no way of knowing that the package was altered from its original state. This is where the magic comes in.
- Either the public key or the private key can be used to determine the integrity of a file. Anyone can find out the public key (because its embedded within the .SPC file). The private key, however, is known only to the vendor (and perhaps the CA or its agent). When you receive a copy of suspicious software, check it against its private key to determine whether it was altered.
For a walk through the steps of signing a control, along with links to a certification authority, check out Microsoft’s Authenticode site at http://www.microsoft.com/intdev/security/authcode/sixsteps.htm.
Many different government actions (such as the Computer Decency Act and the Clipper chip in the United States, and Germany's temporary ban on Compuserve) have tried, without success, to regulate violent or sexually oriented content on the Internet.
Each effort has failed, due to the distributed nature of the Net and public outrage at anything that smacks of governmental censorship.
The World Wide Web Consortium has been working to allow parental, employer and administrative control over this type of material. Self-regulation is expected to prove much more successful than governmental action because it empowers people closer to
home to determine what material is or is not acceptable.
The PICS standard is the result of several conferences addressing the conflicting needs of censorship and free speech. By implementing a standard system of rating content (much like in the film industry), content developers can post labels on their
network content, describing the level of risque[as] material it contains.
URL
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS/
This site is the home page for the development of the PICS standard. The World Wide Web Consortium has taken on the effort of establishing a method for implementing rating systems for Internet content that is more dynamic than the system used in theaters.
PICS is not attempting to establish how ratings are assigned, but rather how rating systems are implemented.
URL
http://www.rsac.org
This site is the home of the Recreational Standards Advisory Council. The RSAC provides a PICS-compliant rating system and a Web interface for registering the content of Web sites and individual Web pages.
Web site administrators can register the content of their Web pages with an entity such as the RSAC. When you receive your ratings, they should be placed within the <HEAD> container tag of an HTML document. An example of this tag is as follows:
<META http-equiv="PICS-Label" content=' (PICS-1.1 "http://www.rsac.org/ratingsv01.html" l gen true comment "RSACi North America Server" by "[email protected]" for "http://www.domain.net/user" on "1996.08.16T08:15-0500" exp "1997.01.01T08:15-0500" r (n 0 s 0 v 0 l 0))'>
This example rates the URL http://WWW.Domain.Net/User as a 0 (completely safe) for Nudity, Sex, Violence and Language. It was registered in the name of [email protected], and is good from August 16, 1996 until January 1, 1997 between the hours of 8:15 AM
and 5:00 PM. It's everything a parent could ask for.
Microsoft's Internet Ratings API exposes certain features of the PICS standard to the programmer. This API is also part of Nashville (Microsoft's code name for their Internet add-on pack).
With this API you can, of course, enable or disable the ratings features. You can also check the authorized level of access enjoyed by the current user. This access is defined by the PICS standard. If the user does not have a level of access
appropriate for the page, a Request Denied dialog is displayed.
Using this API, you can determine the ratings of a site or compare the ratings on two different sites. In this way, you can assure a user (no guarantees, though) that a site that reports a set of ratings has been verified by a trusted 3rd
party.
In this chapter you have learned about the processes involved in downloading, verifying and installing ActiveX controls.
You have learned about two of the <OBJECT> tag's parameters—Code and CODETYPE, and how they can be used to identify the location, version and machine type for a control. Files of several kinds can be used as ActiveX controls, including
portable executables, custom controls and cabinet archives. You can add an .INF file to a cabinet or place it all by itself on a Web page to tell a user's machine the where, how and what of installing ActiveX controls and their required files.
ActiveX uses an enhanced MIME type to identify the type of computer, such as Mac, UNIX or Windows. This format allows a content provider to enable a user to reap the benefits of an ActiveX Web site, no matter what type of computer he prefers to use.
You are also familiar with many of the features of ActiveX security. This set of APIs enables users of your control to rest assured that the code they download from the Net is the same code that you posted.
ActiveX security relies on the use of X.509 and PKCS#7 security certificates. These certificates are verified with a trusted authority, such as a commercial or individual issuer. These security measures can reassure, but not guarantee, a user that his
copy of your code is intact. The only way to guarantee its integrity is to process it against your top-secret private key. You can, but do not have to, use the Base Security Layer SDK to enable these security features.
ActiveX has another type of security, based on the PICS standard, to allow parents, employers and other authorities to censor access to content they feel is not appropriate for their users. Using the Internet Ratings API, you can add this level of
security to your own standalone applications. Use the HTML implementation of PICS to rate the content of your own Web pages.
Create an .INF file that performs the following functions:
