RTMP with FMS - rtmpdump concerns
 

I am looking into flash media being streamed by a server with rtmp, but I came across rtmpdump software that can download rtmp streamed files, thus losing the protection of streaming the files in the first place.

Anyone heard of this and have you protected against it?

Apart from more sophisticated authentication there are servers - and I believe FMS is one of them - capable of supporting secret tokens. The dump software will lack the token request as it must come from the supporting player.

Here's a discussion on using it with Wowza for Flowplayer:

amazon. flowplayer. org/ demos/plugins/streaming/secure-wowza .html

(Sorry, I can't yet post full URLs.)

There are also some low-end approaches, like not giving your files .flv or other standard extensions. Many of the dump software (this includes Ant Toolbar for progressive downloads) only look for assets with known extensions.

Apart from all this, Adobe suggesting streamed videos were "secure" in the first place has always been a wide stretch. It's a common misconception people have. You've always need server-side tricks to keep people from capturing the data, and I've yet to see anything that's 100% foolproof.