Enable remote avatars in Forums - Security Implications

Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 8:20 pm

Well as I usually do I searched your forums BEFORE posting a question which 9 times out of 10 solves my problem/question. But only posts I found about this were older than dirt. I have "Enable remote avatars" set to "ON" and wonder if I should reconsider... This is what I read

Quote:

This has been a known problem for a great deal of time. The fact is, webmasters should have that feature turned off for a variety of reasons, but the major reason being vulnerabilities.

Simply go to Forum Admin/General Configuration and disable "Enable remote avatars" to solve this problem.

If people want to have an avatar, they can pick one from the gallary or upload one. You shouldn't need to remote feed one in the first place.

I take it this feature has been secured some since these days, but is it still one of those features that is better left disabled? Is uploading an avatar less of a security risk than Enable remote avatars? I always thought allowing any sort of upload was the last thing you should allow...?

Also, if I disable this now, I assume any members' avatars that have been set in this manner wont work anymore...

Thanks in advance for your time Smile

oh and btw I'm running latest RN distro and sentinel Smile

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 9:30 am

Security in that area has been improved but why take the chance?
If any of my users want their own avatar I'm quite happy to upload it for them and set it up in their account. I do make regular back-ups but I can really do without the hassle of someone linking to something nasty

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 7:54 pm

thanks for the reply Smile

guess I knew it in my gut but had to hear it Razz

which makes me wonder, what about forum signatures? Should I be turning that off too?

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 1:56 am

Turning off 'allow html' in the forum set up will help. I have never really used the signatures feature for images but I'm fairly sure you cannot actually 'upload' an image, instead it tends to be a remote link.
Again, this is vulnerable but you also have the added impact that linking to external content will usually slow your site down and in some cases when the image cannot be found, it can slow the site down quite badly. Make it a habit that wherever possible, your site only links to images that are uploaded to your hosting webspace.