{"id":147,"date":"2004-09-01T00:39:11","date_gmt":"2004-08-31T16:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/http:\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/archives\/2004\/09\/2004_09_01_0039.php"},"modified":"2004-09-01T00:39:11","modified_gmt":"2004-08-31T16:39:11","slug":"livejournal-users-beware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/09\/01\/livejournal-users-beware","title":{"rendered":"LiveJournal users beware"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Visit site&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I just noticed that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/\">LiveJournal<\/a> has a <em>lousy<\/em> cookie based authentication system.<\/p>\n<p>Not really a threat unless you like accessing stuff on a public terminal (or friends houses). The lesson here is that when you access your account from other pcs, don&#8217;t forget to <strong>log-out.<\/strong><\/p>\n<!--more-->\n<p>&#8220;Visit site&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Visit site&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Visit blog&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/~miye\/\">Jem<\/a> logged on using this pc a couple of days ago. I went to some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/\">LJ<\/a> entries of my friends just now &#8211; I and noticed that I was still logged on her account. Even when she had clearly posted from <em>her<\/em> house since the time she had been here.<\/p>\n<p>This flaw is clearly a lack of foresight on the developers&#8217; part. You can easily add some security checks to store and compare the last cookie assigned to the cookie being used in the current session &#8211; If it&#8217;s different, then simply generate the page as a logged out user and require him\/her to re-enter their credentials if they wish to log-in. There is also the cookie expiration method. Usually <em>both<\/em> implementations (and some others) are used simultaneously for good measure. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/\">LJ<\/a> team apparently didn&#8217;t notice this when they were creating the damn system.<\/p>\n<p>If you use your account in one pc exclusively, then this is nothing to worry about. But if you&#8217;re like a blogger from hell who likes checking everyminute wherever you are, then make damn sure that you logout afterwards. Besides, this is the internet, data is <em>much<\/em> easier to  crack than a physical lock, so it doesn&#8217;t hurt to play it safe.<\/p>\n<p>Anyways, just a friendly warning to all the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.livejournal.com\/\">LJ<\/a> users &#8211; <em>knowing is half the battle.<\/em> As for me, I&#8217;m perfectly content with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.movabletype.org\/\">MovableType<\/a> running on my own server. Can&#8217;t wait till they release version 3.1<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Visit site&#8221; I just noticed that LiveJournal has a lousy cookie based authentication system. Not really a threat unless you like accessing stuff on a public terminal (or friends houses). The lesson here is that when you access your account from other pcs, don&#8217;t forget to log-out.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}