The Fighting Fundamental Forums

Tomato cannot answer for himself? He said the "software" and "admins." That is not true.

Since you are so accusing...

I didn't know that the PMs were in plain text in the database, and you and Tomato did. What are you both hiding? Does Tomato still have the copy of the forum? Apparently. You had my password.

So, when it comes down to maliciousness, your accusations are unfounded and hypocritical.

(05-01-2016, 05:18 PM)admin Wrote: [ -> ]

(05-01-2016, 05:08 PM)FSSL Wrote: [ -> ]You said, "By the way, I know for a fact that this is a lie.  I know the software.  I know site admins can read the PMs."

You said "software." You also said that "admins can read the PMs." The software does not allow access to the PMs. Admins cannot read the PMs though the software.

Thanks to you and admin, I NOW know that can be done through MySql. ONLY the WEBSITE DEVELOPER can read PMs if he checks out the database.

Good grief, you ARE the website developer. You run CPanel and can readily run MySQL admin or query the proper tables from the shell. 

Stop pretending you don't know how to do this.

^This.  He's the website admin (emphasis mine).  When he gave me permission to fix the way images showed up, I had website admin access.  I know, and he knows just how easy it is to view the contents of the database because we both had the same exact access for a while.

He's been parsing his words, hoping nobody knows enough about this to realize we knew that he knew he had access to PMs all along. 

Or, to put it more simply, he's lying again.  Which is why I'll never go back to that slum he calls a forum.

You said "software" and "admins." Both of which are not true.
Now.. are your current users on this forum protected from their PMs not being looked at since you both are into looking at the database? Probably not.

(05-01-2016, 05:34 PM)FSSL Wrote: [ -> ]You said "software" and "admins." Both of which are not true.
Now.. are your current users on this forum protected from their PMs not being looked at since you both are into looking at the database? Probably not.

Wow, if you're as ignorant as you are pretending to be, you have no business running a forum.  Both are absolutely true.

It's ALL software -- SMF, mySQL, Cpanel, mySQLAdmin, etc.  And you ARE the admin of all that software. 

Is there NOTHING you won't lie about?   You're reprehensible.  If anyone doubted what a liar you are, you've removed all doubt with this thread.

Please explain how admins can read PMs.

By the way, a denial of service attack on a forum as flaky as the old, old, FFF.com is this easy (this is how you'd do it in bash, typically Linux). It's just as easy with the Windows command line, and technically, there are a variety of ways to run bash on Windows, anyway:

#!/bin/bash
while true
do
curl https://domain-you-want-to-attack
done

This wouldn't be enough to bring down a robust site, but it would kill the old, old, FFF.com.

Fortunately, the Apache logs will record every curl "GET" in that infinite loop, and the IP address of the endlessly repeated request will point to the attacker(s). There are other commands, such as wget, which would do the same sort of thing. Like I said, bringing down the old, old, FFF.com is a piece of cake. Any moron, including FSSL or Ransom, could do it.

The only hope of getting away with it is to stop and hope that the admin doesn't look at the logs until they've been recycled out of the log collection and replacement loop. Depending on how the log cycle is set, it could take weeks or months for the evidence to go away. If the web site owner is making backups, the evidence will be there forever.

So, Tomato, you won't answer how admins are supposedly able to read PMs?

---

Ransom is an admin. Please explain how he can supposedly access PMs.

(05-01-2016, 06:14 PM)FSSL Wrote: [ -> ]So, Tomato, you won't answer how admins are supposedly able to read PMs?

You already know how to do it. 

1. Go to your site's CPanel.  You know how to do this, otherwise you couldn't have set up, updated, or modified your site.  

2. Click on the icon for phpMyAdmin.



3. Log in with the admin username/password for your forum software's database.  You have to know this to do any work on your site, but if you lie and say you forgot, the username/password are easily changed or retrieved.  I know. I forgot my username and password while making this demo for you, and retrieved the info in less than 1 minute.



4. Browse to the table you want to view (in this case, "smf_personal_messages", but since I don't have smf installed on my site, I'll show you "wp_comments" in a wordpress table instead):



5. See the comment fields in the column called "comment_content"?  The private messages will look just like that, in plain text.  Only the column name will be "body" instead of "comment_content".  If you want to view the entire private message, all you have to do is click on the message, like this:



As I said, in the case of smf, the column name would be "body", not "comment_content".  

Anyone who has ever set up or maintained a web site knows how to do all this, especially since cPanel an phpMyAdmin makes it so easy.  I mistakenly referred to it as mySQLAdmin before.  I haven't done any work on my site in years, as you can see from the date on the comments (2010), so I forgot the correct name.

See how easy that was?  It only took about 1 or 2 minutes for me to get to the Wordpress comments and view them in the database.  It would only take about 1 or 2 minutes for you to browse through ALL of the private messages.

(05-01-2016, 05:27 PM)FSSL Wrote: [ -> ]Tomato cannot answer for himself? He said the "software" and "admins." That is not true.

Since you are so accusing...

I didn't know that the PMs were in plain text in the database, and you and Tomato did. What are you both hiding? Does Tomato still have the copy of the forum? Apparently. You had my password.

So, when it comes down to maliciousness, your accusations are unfounded and hypocritical.

I've had to know. I don't access such information unless required. In 20 years of administration there have been times I've had to access the information. You had no reason to access the information. Nothing hypocritical about it. I have explained myself. I haven't made unfounded accusations. No. I don't have a copy of the database. Never keep one.

I knew exactly what Rogue was saying. You did too. You run websites for dozens of businesses. I don't know how you expect me to believe you didn't know this.

(05-01-2016, 06:34 PM)The Rogue Tomato Wrote: [ -> ]

(05-01-2016, 06:14 PM)FSSL Wrote: [ -> ]So, Tomato, you won't answer how admins are supposedly able to read PMs?

You already know how to do it. 

1. Go to your site's CPanel.  You know how to do this, otherwise you couldn't have set up, updated, or modified your site.  

2. Click on the icon for phpMyAdmin.



3. Log in with the admin username/password for your forum software's database.  You have to know this to do any work on your site, but if you lie and say you forgot, the username/password are easily changed or retrieved.  I know. I forgot my username and password while making this demo for you, and retrieved the info in less than 1 minute.



4. Browse to the table you want to view (in this case, "smf_personal_messages", but since I don't have smf installed on my site, I'll show you "wp_comments" in a wordpress table instead):



5. See the comment fields in the column called "comment_content"?  The private messages will look just like that, in plain text.  Only the column name will be "body" instead of "comment_content".  If you want to view the entire private message, all you have to do is click on the message, like this:



As I said, in the case of smf, the column name would be "body", not "comment_content".  

Anyone who has ever set up or maintained a web site knows how to do all this, especially since cPanel an phpMyAdmin makes it so easy.  I mistakenly referred to it as mySQLAdmin before.  I haven't done any work on my site in years, as you can see from the date on the comments (2010), so I forgot the correct name.

See how easy that was?  It only took about 1 or 2 minutes for me to get to the Wordpress comments and view them in the database.  It would only take about 1 or 2 minutes for you to browse through ALL of the private messages.

Mysqladmin is the shell interface. You can do this from the shell as well.