Any way to prevent caching/protect SWF file?

Donny Bahama · July 3rd, 2008, 04:20 AM

I created a presentation using a (great/free) app called Wink that exports as .swf. Now, I need to send links to some very significant people so they can view the presentation. I need this to be a very secure thing. I plan to address logins, session IDs, etc. in php.

But the one thing that concerns me is that no matter how secure I make things server side, the .swf file will end up in the client's cache. Is there any way to prevent this? Keep it from downloading? Make it self-destruct? Overwrite it?

PLEASE HELP!

marSoul · July 3rd, 2008, 06:16 AM

There are some ways, one way is to add a random number in the end of the url, for example : http://www.mysite.com/myswf.swf?4353 , it will make browser to download it each time. you can generate random number in flash.

Adobe describes other way in this tutorial :
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/view...4743&sliceId=1

This tutorial has some methods too :
http://www.permadi.com/tutorial/flashcache/index.html

hope they help you...

Donny Bahama · July 3rd, 2008, 04:59 PM

Thanks for the response! I can't use anything that involves modification to the Flash source. The .swf file is being created for me, and I have no Flash dev environment. I found this php code:

Code:


			
header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT");
header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT");
header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate");
header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0", false);
session_start();
header("Cache-Control: private");

which is supposed to be effective in preventing caching, but I have yet to test it. Another possibility would be to have a second flash file as a wrapper, and have it call the main file, but I'd have to have someone write that for me.

Donny Bahama · July 3rd, 2008, 05:06 PM

It's been suggested to me that the biggest problem I'll have is preventing people from saving the .swf. Can anyone comment on the feasibility of the "wrapper file" method I mentioned above?

Donny Bahama · July 3rd, 2008, 06:37 PM

Well, it looks like I'm off to a good start... http://ryanfait.com/resources/protec...from-download/