How to Crack a Website - XSS, Cookies, Sessions

twistedmoney45 writes "Informit.com provides an insiders look at a real life XSS attack and how it was used to bypass the authentication scheme of an online web application, leading to "shell" access, an admin account, and more. XSS attacks are often discussed in theory — this walk through illustrates just how dangerous these types of attacks can be in reality."

Comments

Slow news day?

[Fusen]

While first of all, none of this is actually new in any way or form. I thought most of the normal /. readers would know most of this, including at least anyone who actually codes in PHP the real crux is that half of what was done, was only accomplished from a VERY poorly written site, such as not checking the user's id against the user who created the "update list". Stuff like being able to change a id variable and being able to see other users data is just basic poor php coding. Then you have the create admin page, which didn't seem to check the user's id or auth level. It's the sort of article you would expect on "hackinpr0z.com"

Re:Some simple fixes would be sufficient

[Goaway]

Your "most important" section could better be stated as "don't use PHP, it's broken by design".