>2018

>be me

>interning at gov-adjacent org for the summer, i won't name.

>asked to fix login bug

>open the code

>some asshole wrote login logic in frontend JS

>literally SELECT * FROM users

>IN THE FUCKING BROWSER

>it fetches the entire damn user table

>plaintext passwords

>looping through them

>comparing with ===

>I'm watching a goddamn credential leak live in HD

>returns true if it finds a match

>otherwise

>wait for it

>if ("true" === "true") return false;

>WHAT

>THE ACTUAL

>FUCK

>is this dumb-as-shit logic

>log in fails because truth exists

>uses $.cookie to save "loggedin=yes"

>expires: 1

>1 what? second? year? light decade? I DON'T FUCKING KNOW

>error handler is $("error_message").show(LogIn Failed)

>doesn’t even put "LogIn Failed" in quotes

>this shit doesn't even run

>ask senior dev what the hell this is and who approved this

>he shrugs and says "it did use to work"

>wtf.jpg

I vaguely remember taking a photo of it on my phone, and I didn't even know where to start when attempting to fix it. The problem was the login function they actually used... authenticates users... in the browser.. using SQL.

Instead of sending a username and password to the server and letting it tell you "yes or no," it downloads the entire user database into your browser, and then it checks if your username/passwords match any record locally.

I don't even remember correctly if they had a real backend API, they might as well just had read/write to the DB directly.

Didn't get a chance to finish fixing it, mostly because this happened towards the end of my shit that day + by the time the next day arrived, somebody else was apparently already working on it.

I didn't ask, I didn't want to know -- I did want to turn this into a YouTube video. I ranted to this to my grandpa about it. He was both surprised and not surprised lol