Can someone else access my game's buildGUID?

Hello. I want to use Application.buildGUID as a encryption key for communicating with the server. Is it possible for anyone else to access the buildGUID of my game?

 

I have no idea how that is generated, but the first thing I'd check is just output the buildGUID and then grep every file from your build for that string. I'd venture a guess you will find the string somewhere in one of the files, and always at the same location between builds, which would make it not ideal for an encryption key. I'd be curious to find out if that is the case though.

 

As a rule of the thumb, if you're targeting PC, then all data that can be accessed by your game can be accessed by the user of the game. They can find and alter buildGUID.

You need to decide what you're trying to do here - protect the traffic from tampering or something else.

As far as I can tell, buildGuid is implemented as a property that calls InternalCall method, so at least it is not a naked string lying in the open.

However, hijacking the property and extracting the guid should be easy.

 

I build an apk and extracted it. I didn't find any file containing the buildGUID string. I think it is possible to access it by using the applications that can watch the variable values for running applications.

 

I need to Identify the right client version than fake client version in the server

 

Well, if the user is untrustworthy, you can't do that through buildGUID, because the user can track it down and spoof it. In Theory.

Also, you said "encrypt" and not "identify the version". That's not the same thing.

 

If I can protect buildGUID I can use it to identify the client.

 

You fundamentally cannot protect buildGUID from being modified by a user. If a user gets interested in modifying it, they will modify it. Inevitably.

You can assume that known GUID probably belongs to a specific version, but you cannot guarantee that the data wasn't altered and that the game wasn't hacked.

Either way if you only want to identify version, that's one thing, but if you a 100% guarantee that buildGUID wasn't altered, then that's impossible.