As of this writing (2000/11/06), our beloved mt2k has a bit of JavaScript that logs people off PM when the user visits his homenode.

While annoying, it's basically harmless. It does, however, reveal a potential security risk. How many of you that have been trapped into visiting the esteemed mt2k's homenode immediately type in your account name and password to log back in, and continue on?

Did you bother to check that you were *really* at www.perlmonks.org, and not at a spoofed login page? Are you sure mt2k hasn't been snagging your password, so he can steal your XP, and sell it on eBay (mostly so he can finally afford a real webhosting service...)?

I'm pretty guilty about running around with JavaScript enabled myself, and I too have been bitten by the mt2k prank. For some reason, I did double check where I wound up, and found it was in a safe place, and not the "mt2k password stealing page".

While I personally would rather not see JavaScript banned from the HTML we can enter (ar0n used to have some cool stuff on his homenode in JS), this kind of script, and the security risk is the exact sort of thing that I should imagine would cause it to get yanked.

And Dog help the soul that tries to spoof a password page around here, because the retaliation isn't just going to be getting /msg'ed to death, spammed, and nuked, it's going to reporting you to the IRS (if you're American), Interpol for drug trafficking, the UN for warcrimes, and listing you on mt2k's AOL buddy list.

--Chris

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In reply to On JavaScript, mt2k, and security risks by jcwren

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