Secure source code file flow.json

Hi @AnusudhanK7

this question gets asked from time to time on the forum - it's worth having a search to see the previous discussions so we don't have to repeat them all over again.

From a technical standpoint, it is a hard problem to fully secure any program if the end user has access to the device.

You cite compiling python to pyc as an example - there are lots of tools out there that can decompile pyc back into readable python. The same is true of all compiled languages.

There are certainly steps you could take to make it harder for the end user to access the information, but it will never be fully secure if they have command-line access.

For example, you could create a custom storage plugin for node-red that can handle decrypting the flows file. But you'd have to acknowledge the code to do that decrypting would be node.js code that a user could look at and reproduce for themselves. It would avoid the casual user from opening the flows file directly, but any determined user would be able to access the flow information.

As I said, have a search of the previous discussions on this topic. You'll soon see there isn't a magic solution to this.