"Authors Table Attack" Detected when altering Admi

New Member Joined: Jul 16, 2006 Posts: 6

I am not sure if this has been mentioned before - I had a search but it yielded no results. When modifying a God admin password and pressing saving on my site the Hack Detected screen fires up stating an 'Authors Table Attack' has been attempted.

Now I can understand why this happens and as you need to be logged in as an admin to make the changes you are immune to the ban, but it has worried a few of my admins & I though it was worth asking if this was a known side effect of NukeSentinel?

This happened in version 2.4.2pl5 (Bundled with the 2.02.02 release) and it still happens in version 2.5.0.

Thanks.

Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 11:31 am

You have to be logged in as GOD admin to do such a thing.

Where you or your other admins logged in as god admin?

Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 9:11 pm

It is very important to distinguish between a "God admin" and a normal admin. Without the use of phpMyAdmin, you will only ever have ONE true "God admin". Only a God admin can get into the Edit Admins function if Nuke Sentinel's "Author" blocker is turned on.

Now, you might ask, "well, then, what is a 'normal admin' vs. a 'God admin'". Your "God admin" is set at the time you create your first admin id upon setting up your PHP-nuke database.

A "God Admin" is the only one who can set up new "normal admins" for the site. These "normal admins" can be given "Super User" access (which is NOT the same as "God Admin") or they can be given admin rights to individual modules. "Super Users" will also have access to the site-wide admin functions EXCEPT "Edit Admins" if you have NS's blocker on (which is a MUST in my book for protection purposes).

Now, back to why I said "Without the use of phpMyAdmin, you will only ever have ONE true 'God admin'." As the one and only "God Admin" you can create other admins and then through phpMyAdmin make them "God" by changing their nuke_authors record's 'name' property to "God".

Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2006 1:15 am

I am aware of how the GOD admin account works - We do however have 3 GOD admin accounts setup (This was done way back in an earlier 6.x version of PHPnuke - The accounts etc all pulled into the nukescript 2.02.02 release) This was setup so noone was better (For want of a better word) than any one else.

This happens when myself (As a GOD admin) alters my password / another GOD admins password - I have not attempted it with a normal admin super user account. To make out accounts GOD status we did ammend the table in phpnuke.

Maybe the extra GOD accounts effect the way the checks are validated?