This sort of slipshod rubbish is why security on the internet is so hosed these days. If Dell can’t be trusted to get an SSL certificate that has the right name of the server, who can? Schoolboy error, as Ron Manager would say.

The danger here is that people start to see this kind of crap, and blindly click on ‘OK’. If it’s Dell, it must be safe, right? The next time they see this kind of popup, it’s less scary, so just click on the OK button and you’ll be fine, don’t worry about the implications, just a minor mistake.

No wonder people still fall for phishing tricks and 419 chain emails. The example from ‘The Experts’ is pretty piss poor.

I had to do some coding this week, the first time in a long while. The PHP script I was writing was a straightforward “lookup the MySQL table” type jobbie which then created an eDirectory account if the details supplied by the user matched what the database held. All well and good.

Then I had to create an alias to point to a user object. Straightforward enough, mormally, but how to do it via LDAP? There wasn’t much help available, but I got there in the end. Here’s the code that does the name and alias creation.

// prepare data for adding user account.
$password = randompassword();
$info["firstname"]=$firstname;
$info["sn"]=$surname;
$info["fullname"] = $firstname . ” ” . $surname;
$info["mail"]=$emailname . “@itnet.ie”;
$info["objectclass"]=”User”;
$info["userPassword"]=$password;
$info["description"]=”Banner ID: ” . $id;

// Build up the full user DN that we’re about to try to create.

$object_dn = “cn=” . $emailname . “, ou= ” . $year . “,ou=” . $context . $base;
if ($debug) {
echo “In createLDAPAccount: User data is ” . $object_dn . “
“;
}

// prepare data for adding alias to user account (NDS alias object)
$alias["objectclass"] = “aliasObject”;
$alias["aliasedObjectName"] = $object_dn;
$alias["cn"] = $id;
$alias_dn = “cn=” . $id . “,ou= ” . $year . “,ou=” . $context . $base;

// Check to see if this user exists already.

$filter=”(cn=$emailname)”;
$search_result=ldap_search($ds, $base_dn, $filter);
$existing_user = ldap_get_entries($ds, $search_result);

//User account exists. Print error message and stop.

if ($existing_user["count"] > 0) {
// if ($debug) { echo “
Duplicate name in directory:”; }
$resultspage->assign(“errortext”,”The requested login name is already taken, please try again”);
$resultspage->display(‘template2.tpl’);
exit;
}
else
{
// add data to directory
if(!(ldap_add($ds, $object_dn, $info))) {
$resultspage->assign(‘errortext’,”An attempt to add your account to the system failed. Please
contact the helpdesk”);
$resultspage->display(‘template2.tpl’);
exit;
}
else {
// Add Alias in the same context….

if(!(ldap_add($ds, $alias_dn, $alias))) {
$resultspage->assign(‘errortext’,”An attempt to add your alias to the system failed. Please contact the helpdesk”);
$resultspage->display(‘template2.tpl’);
exit;

As an aside, I’m working too much and need some time off.