[i dunno] how would you go about this? - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

FloydianOne · 02-13-2005, 09:01 PM

So at my university our webpages all start the same way and are different by our college ID.

Ie. my webpage is http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg571q

where gtg571q is my id.

My friend and I want to create some kind of script or program, that will take a list of ID's like maybe in a text file seperated by commas. And open up everyones webpage.

I was thinking it would be cool to do this in a firefox extension and have it open up all in new tabs. However I dont really know how I would go about this, it seems easy enough.

Anyone have any ideas?

manalone · 02-14-2005, 01:44 AM

http://www.xulplanet.com/
XUL is the language for firefox. so I would start there

trache · 02-14-2005, 11:07 AM

FloydianOne:

At the college I used to attend, everyone was given a 8-10 digit number that was deemed "private". When marks were given out, only the last four digits of the number were put on marks sheets taped to the professors door to keep everything confidential (two students in the same class having the same four last numbers was very rare).

Not that the above has any bearing on what you're asking to do directly, but if the numbers are deemed "private" by any means, any unusual activity on your part on the university's web server could be some form of cybercrime.

Watch your testing! If the university's IT department sees their webserver logs and notices that a bunch of hits came to non-existant URLs (typos in your program perhaps, or IDs that haven't had their web-space activated?), they could start an investigation, landing you in hot water.

manalone posted a great link. The only thing I will add is: "be careful".

FloydianOne · 02-14-2005, 11:28 AM

We have two id's actually... one is what is linked to our grades, student accounts etc. which is a 9 digit number that replaced our social security number. And then we have our other id which I dont think is private because we have a database where we can search backwards or fowards for name/ID

jaypc2 · 02-14-2005, 03:49 PM

id do it in PHP and you could even go as far to create a mySQL database and interface for adding and removing names and such with ease from the internet

skaven · 02-27-2005, 09:11 PM

given enough time, it wouldn't take long to build up a database, using PHP or Perl and a MySQL database, of the valid pages. Assume that you use something like the HTTP-Lite Perl module, and that each GET takes ~1 sec to verify. Then assuming 8-character user IDs, which can only contain alphanumeric characters, you've got 36^8 = 2821109907456 possibilities, which boils down to ... 89,702 years of compute time. Whew! Man I probably should have computed this last part before starting this post ;-)

Yeah...you'd probably be better off simply trying to get shell access on the web server (this is fairly commonplace at my university) -- then you just cd to /home and do an ls -- instant list of users.

02-13-2005, 09:01 PM	#1 (permalink)
FloydianOne Crazy	[i dunno] how would you go about this? So at my university our webpages all start the same way and are different by our college ID. Ie. my webpage is http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg571q where gtg571q is my id. My friend and I want to create some kind of script or program, that will take a list of ID's like maybe in a text file seperated by commas. And open up everyones webpage. I was thinking it would be cool to do this in a firefox extension and have it open up all in new tabs. However I dont really know how I would go about this, it seems easy enough. Anyone have any ideas?

02-14-2005, 01:44 AM	#2 (permalink)
manalone Once upon a time...	http://www.xulplanet.com/ XUL is the language for firefox. so I would start there __________________ -- Man Alone ======= Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.

02-14-2005, 11:07 AM	#3 (permalink)
trache Insane	FloydianOne: At the college I used to attend, everyone was given a 8-10 digit number that was deemed "private". When marks were given out, only the last four digits of the number were put on marks sheets taped to the professors door to keep everything confidential (two students in the same class having the same four last numbers was very rare). Not that the above has any bearing on what you're asking to do directly, but if the numbers are deemed "private" by any means, any unusual activity on your part on the university's web server could be some form of cybercrime. Watch your testing! If the university's IT department sees their webserver logs and notices that a bunch of hits came to non-existant URLs (typos in your program perhaps, or IDs that haven't had their web-space activated?), they could start an investigation, landing you in hot water. manalone posted a great link. The only thing I will add is: "be careful". __________________ "You looked at me as if I was eating runny eggs in slow motion." - Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip

02-14-2005, 03:49 PM	#5 (permalink)
jaypc2 Tilted Location: south east	id do it in PHP and you could even go as far to create a mySQL database and interface for adding and removing names and such with ease from the internet __________________ Zero Cool stay sexy

02-14-2005, 11:28 AM	#4 (permalink)
FloydianOne Crazy	We have two id's actually... one is what is linked to our grades, student accounts etc. which is a 9 digit number that replaced our social security number. And then we have our other id which I dont think is private because we have a database where we can search backwards or fowards for name/ID

02-27-2005, 09:11 PM	#6 (permalink)
skaven Insane Location: Austin, TX	given enough time, it wouldn't take long to build up a database, using PHP or Perl and a MySQL database, of the valid pages. Assume that you use something like the HTTP-Lite Perl module, and that each GET takes ~1 sec to verify. Then assuming 8-character user IDs, which can only contain alphanumeric characters, you've got 36^8 = 2821109907456 possibilities, which boils down to ... 89,702 years of compute time. Whew! Man I probably should have computed this last part before starting this post ;-) Yeah...you'd probably be better off simply trying to get shell access on the web server (this is fairly commonplace at my university) -- then you just cd to /home and do an ls -- instant list of users.