4 ms·

> the "sign up" page which was the source of a really famous hack in 2000 I'm not sure if this is the same exploit, but there was an exploit where you could st

by sejje 5y ago

> the "sign up" page which was the source of a really famous hack in 2000 I'm not sure if this is the same exploit, but there was an exploit where you could steal usernames from people during signup. The victim's username had to be an AIM-only account (never linked to a paid AOL account). Then with some sorcery, you bypassed the "invalid name (already taken)" UI block and the backend would make an AOL account with the username. I stole "christ" from someone this way. Sorry, Chris T. I was 16 years old. A friend stole it from me later, and then someone TOS'd it after that (banned it using a mod account). Random people would message the account all the time, as if it were actually God, and ask for advice. 16 year old me did my best to give well-considered advice. > including one where he stole pretty much every 3char name available Interesting. I think people in my friend circle were in possession of two until AIM pretty much died ('zad' and 'baz'--only 75% sure I got the 2nd one right). Guess they got lucky!

notadev 5y ago
I think it was the same exploit which used free.aol.com. They had a 3-step sign up process with the first step letting you choose a name. It would validate the name was >= 3 chars in length, started with a letter, and didn’t contain banned words. Once validated, the name was stored in a hidden input value in the source of the second page. Someone saved the webpage offline so you could replace the sn variable with any name not on use on AOL. Then open it locally and go right to step 3 where you enter credit details. This let you creat indents, 2chars, banned words, and steal AIMs.
- sejje 5y ago
  Interesting. Ours used some dos32.bas-style interaction with the AOL 5.0 client during their de-facto sign up process. > started with a capital letter Fixed that for you. We had an lcase exploit, of course.
  - notadev 5y ago
    Was this using master AOL/star tool and invoking an FDO token that generated the modal?

by sejje 5y ago

notadev 5y ago

I think it was the same exploit which used free.aol.com. They had a 3-step sign up process with the first step letting you choose a name. It would validate the name was >= 3 chars in length, started with a letter, and didn’t contain banned words. Once validated, the name was stored in a hidden input value in the source of the second page. Someone saved the webpage offline so you could replace the sn variable with any name not on use on AOL. Then open it locally and go right to step 3 where you enter credit details. This let you creat indents, 2chars, banned words, and steal AIMs.

sejje 5y ago
Interesting. Ours used some dos32.bas-style interaction with the AOL 5.0 client during their de-facto sign up process. > started with a capital letter Fixed that for you. We had an lcase exploit, of course.
- notadev 5y ago
  Was this using master AOL/star tool and invoking an FDO token that generated the modal?