From: PF: MySQL Date: August 3 2004 2:40pm Subject: RE: Security question List-Archive: http://lists.mysql.com/win32/15322 Message-Id: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Whats to stop me from copying over my own 'mysql' data folder over an > existing one? > > I have already done this today and it allows me to access any > databases > sitting on the server with root access... > > How can I prevent something like this from happening? Depends on the OS that you are using. Windows 9x, you can't stop it. Windows XP Home, you can't stop it. Windows nt/2000/XP Pro, you can set user permissions to prevent such things from happening. MySQL is only as secure (locally) as the operating system you are running it on. -Kevin