LITTLEBLACKDOG.COM

Stray Dog Joined: 11 Mar 2005 Posts: 2

Before the mods move this post, I think it really does belong here...

Basically, as probably a lot of your know, there is an extension (add-in) for Firefox called BugMeNot that allows you to log into various free but registration-required sites, by utilizing a login someone else signed up for and added to the BugMeNot database.

Long story short: for giggles and grins, I thought I'd see what happened if I logged out of LBD, and tried logging in using BugMeNot.

Much to my surprise, it worked. The account it logged me in as is "vimpaler".

Not sure if there's something to be done here at LBD, or something at BugMeNot, but I wanted the admins to be aware of it.

Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 6:30 pm Post subject: Re: BugMeNot firefox extension

vimpaler wrote:
Before the mods move this post, I think it really does belong here...

Basically, as probably a lot of your know, there is an extension (add-in) for Firefox called BugMeNot that allows you to log into various free but registration-required sites, by utilizing a login someone else signed up for and added to the BugMeNot database.

Long story short: for giggles and grins, I thought I'd see what happened if I logged out of LBD, and tried logging in using BugMeNot.

Much to my surprise, it worked. The account it logged me in as is "vimpaler".

Not sure if there's something to be done here at LBD, or something at BugMeNot, but I wanted the admins to be aware of it.

Oops, guess I was still logged in as that when I posted that - just to let you know, it was me.

Stray Dog Joined: 14 Apr 2005 Posts: 4

ThunderDawg here.

This is apparently another bogus login name.

You last visited on Wed Feb 13, 2008 9:03 pm

Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 7:24 pm Post subject:

I would delete ^^ that guy ^^

Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 12:10 am Post subject:

So, if someone registers here and then enters that registration into the bugmenot database, it then assigns it randomly to people?

Wonderful.

Yeah, I'll do some "maintenance" now. Basically all I can think of is to cross check those accounts and delete them as we find them.

thanks for the heads up.

Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 12:10 am Post subject:

Actually rather than delete them, I think I'll disable them, so they can't be reused.

Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 12:22 am Post subject:

Which is done. Thanks for the heads up. I can add BugMeNot.com to the list of places I need to check once in awhile for anonymous accounts.

I just checked now, and there are no more working BugMeNot registered accounts.

Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 3:55 am Post subject:

EdisonRex wrote:
Which is done. Thanks for the heads up. I can add BugMeNot.com to the list of places I need to check once in awhile for anonymous accounts.

I just checked now, and there are no more working BugMeNot registered accounts.

I just went over to BugMeNot.com, and apparently they have a section where sites (either private sites or community sites or fraud risks) can be blocked from using that service. Here's a link to their form for that: http://www.bugmenot.com/report.php

Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:05 am Post subject:

EdisonRex wrote:
So, if someone registers here and then enters that registration into the bugmenot database, it then assigns it randomly to people?

Wonderful.

Yeah, I'll do some "maintenance" now. Basically all I can think of is to cross check those accounts and delete them as we find them.

thanks for the heads up.

FWIW, the point of BugMeNot is a repository of user logins and passwords specifically for use on free "registration-required" sites. You know the drill - you go to read an article on the internet (nytimes.com is a prime example), and before you can read it, you have to sign up an e-mail address "for free".

BugMeNot allows you to use a user account and password that someone else already set up, to access that "free" content.

As a bonus, there's even a BugMeNot extension to Firefox that allows the user to right-click on the login screen for these "free" sites, select Log Me In With BugMeNot, and it automatically selects one of the logins for that site from their database, and signs you in.

Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 5:15 am Post subject:

I'm not saying bugmenot is the problem. Looks like a fine anonymiser. But it looked like it could be abused, like with this site. But the block feature will take care of that. I'll run that tonight from home, as I need to copy files to the site in order to do it.

Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 2:24 pm Post subject:

How did bbubb get past the avatar thingy? ...or was that before edrex/FT? Shocked