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A comment on World of Warcraft: one simple line of code can cost you dearly (2016). Parent comment

Re:World of Warcraft: one simple line of code can cost you d... by mickeyp on Tuesday October 30, 2018 @12:26PM (#18338346)
Back in the 90s mIRC would download files to the root directory of mIRC itself -- long before the concept of separating user data and code became the norm on Windows -- and if people had "auto accept file transfers" enabled people could send you a viral "script.ini" (as I recall it was called) to you and immediately overwrite your customisations. The end result would spread rapidly as the infected users would share it with others who join and left the channels they were in.
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Re:World of Warcraft: one simple line of code can cost you d... by distantsounds on Tuesday October 30, 2018 @02:11PM (#18339679)
mIRC by default would not auto-accept .INI files, there was a blacklist on certain file types that would be rejected, with INIs as one of them.
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Re:World of Warcraft: one simple line of code can cost you d... by eiaoa on Tuesday October 30, 2018 @03:00PM (#18340204)
> mIRC by default would not auto-accept .INI files, there was a blacklist on certain file types that would be rejected, with INIs as one of them.

Was that a reaction to the problem described in the GP? Especially in the 80s/90s, defensiveness like that was probably to solve an existing problem.

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Re:World of Warcraft: one simple line of code can cost you d... by tonylucas on Tuesday October 30, 2018 @07:13PM (#18342035)
Exactly that, it was known as the ‘script.ini’ problem, the download directory was changed as well.

It would attempt to send to people as they joined a channel.

More info: http://www.irchelp.org/security/si.html

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Re:World of Warcraft: one simple line of code can cost you d... by jondumbau on Thursday November 01, 2018 @01:28AM (#18351658)
there was the funny magic string that would make half a channels modems disconnect too.
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Re:World of Warcraft: one simple line of code can cost you d... by mickeyp on Thursday November 01, 2018 @05:16AM (#18352288)
Ah, yes, I remember that. I think it was because the modems didn't differentiate between the various layers in the transport stream and took anything resembling low-level modem commands to be gospel.
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Re:World of Warcraft: one simple line of code can cost you d... by mickeyp on Thursday November 01, 2018 @05:15AM (#18352285)
This came in as a result of this. I specifically helped users fix this problem back in the day. Remember, this was the 90s.
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