A Bit Conspicuous

Internet Duct Tape has a post up talking about GreaseMonkey, how to install it and how nice it can be.

I thought it was funny though, that upon following the link to Userscripts.org you are greeted with a large red banner that gives a dire warning:

“A malicious user is uploading scripts that steal cookies.

Extra caution is recommended when installing recently uploaded/updated scripts.“

The resulting thread is full of good information on the topic, as well as a good number of poor souls who aren’t tech savvy but were using GreaseMonkey. It is too bad that Userscripts.org has to deal with malicious people. Thankfully it is just a case of people grabbing scripts, adding code to farm cookies, and re-uploading them as a new version. Shouldn’t be hard to track, but it still creates somewhat of a minefield for the users.

GreaseMonkey looks like a very nice plug-in for Firefox, but it should come with a good warning for the less technical people. User created content and plug-ins are definitely good in the long run, but you do have to be a bit wary.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 26th, 2007 at 9:02 pm and is filed under Links, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.