Re: Form insecurity in Netscape

From: Andy Avery (averyat_private)
Date: Wed Nov 04 1998 - 12:54:02 PST

  • Next message: Mark R. Bowyer - Sun UK - Sun Developer Relations: "Re: Form insecurity in Netscape"

    On Tue, 3 Nov 1998, kelani wrote:
    
    > Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 22:25:35 -0500
    > From: kelani <kelaniat_private>
    > To: BUGTRAQat_private
    > Subject: Form insecurity in Netscape
    >
    > *resubmitted with the offending paragraph removed, thanks for your
    > patience, O phearable one.*
    >
    > Greetings all,
    >
    > Apologies if it has already been known or was discussed earlier. I see no
    > mention in the archive, and it's such an obvious thing...
    >
    > In the Netscape Navigator 3.x and Communicator 4.x installations at my
    > school, where all users share a common login, Navigator seems to write a
    > 'nsformXX.tmp' file when a user fills out a form on a webpage. This file
    > contains the fields the user filled in as plaintext, and looks like this:
    
    
     Just poking around and checking things here, I found that there are two
    conditions that *must* be met for this to happen:
    
    #1) The form that is submitted must be a MIME-Encoded form
    (enctype="multipart/form-data" in the <form> tag) as opposed to the
    default of a URL-Encoded form.  (if there's no "enctype" element in a
    <form> tag, it defaults to URL-Encoded)
    
    #2) the environmental variable TEMP *must* be set.  This was not the case
    for my setup until I added it in my autoexec.bat and rebooted.
    
      I tested this using Communicator v4.04 on Win95.  When I attempted this
    with a URL-Encoded form, it didn't work.  I tested it using a MIME-Encoded
    form and it still didn't work.  So I set TEMP in autoexec and rebooted.
    Tried it on a URL-Encoded form, and it didn't work.  Tried it on the
    MIME-Encoded form, and a file called nstempCG.tmp showed up in the path
    that I set TEMP to.  Both forms were of my creation on my server here, and
    I just wrote dummy perl scripts to receive the call from the web server.
    
      Hope this helps anyone......
    
    _____________________________________________________________
    Andy Avery                      Systems/Network Administrator
    Auragen Communications, Inc.
    620 Park Ave, Ste. 177          v: 716.242.8759
    Rochester, NY 14607             f: 716.242.0417
    



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