Chit chat post rating

[baja_yu]

I thought rating chit chat posts was disabled, so when I opened my User CP today and saw I was rated on a post in CC I was like whaaa... So I was then like, is this something new, are ratings turned on? I opened a thread in CC to see with my own two eyes and the third one that I can see in the dark with, and to my amazement they were not on. So I immediately thought it was an admin/mod that did it, commending me on my great work and that I will be getting a party thrown in my honor too. But, that too was false. I was rated by a regular user. So there was only one option left.... Correct! Magic! I've been practicing a few forms of magic for years, like Voodoo, Necromancy and Thaumaturgy so I was well ready to research that aspect. I used my aforementioned third eye to see the mystical powers that were behind this. After spending much time on it my eye got tired so I decide to explore other options while it rested.

Although the 'Rate this post' is not shown, I could still load the rating URL manually (right click on the link in another post and do open in new tab) which gives me an URL looking like this

http://www.vbforums.com/reputation.php?p=xxxxxxx

I could then manually type the post ID of any post into the URL and use it to rate.

[visualAd]

I think it's always been like that; the last time I looked at the VBulletin source code, you had to write a hack to disable reputation on particular forums.

Looks like a poorly written hack. Clearly a hackable hack.

[MartinLiss]

IMO using that method would be prohibited by the AUP which says "You will not attempt to access any protected sections of the sites or Forums, nor make use of any hacks, cracks, bug exploits, etc. to bypass or modify the features of the forum software at any Internet.com site" and so an abuser of that policy would be subject to banning.

[Nightwalker83]

Yeah, that is one of the loop holes particularly in I.T there is always more than one why to accomplish things. As soon so you disable on route someone figures out how to access the information\feature by other.

[RobDog888]

Well if someone abuses the rep system, which Martin monitors, they would be risking the consequences

[akhileshbc]

I thought rating chit chat posts was disabled, so when I opened my User CP today and saw I was rated on a post in CC I was like whaaa...

For which post ?

[baja_yu]

The one about throwing fat people in front of trains

[akhileshbc]

The one about throwing fat people in front of trains

This one ? : http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...ighlight=train

[JuggaloBrotha]

So is this considered an exploit?

http://www.vbforums.com/search.php?do=process&searchuser=JuggaloBrotha&starteronly=1&forumchoice[]=46

All it does is show a search result for the threads I've made in the CodeBank - Visual Basic .NET section; jmc and a few others have it in their sig's for their codebank threads too.

[MartinLiss]

No. Why would you think it was?

[baja_yu]

That's not an exploit, you can do a search like that from the Search page http://www.vbforums.com/search.php

Just specify the keyword, username (it even has autocomplete/suggestions) and choose a subforum. I use that regularly.

[MartinLiss]

Or you can do a search via Google by startng the search criteria with Site: VBForums.com, leaving a space and then entering whatever you are looking for.

[kfcSmitty]

Actually, site: and vbforums.com have to be together otherwise it won't work.

site:vbforums.com

[MartinLiss]

Actually, site: and vbforums.com have to be together otherwise it won't work.

site:vbforums.com

You're right, sorry.

[Nightwalker83]

What is scary is that the code to go with the link in the first post is accessible via the browser.