Yes, this is posted on April 1st and, no, it is not a April Fool’s joke – except, I hope, on FaceBook’s part, otherwise it represents a serious security weakness in their login protocol.

As I logged into FaceBook today, I noticed (too late) that I had caps lock on and expected to be redirected to the Login error / retry page:

Instead, I found myself logged in as normal.

After playing around with it a little bit, I discovered that if you invert the upper case and lower case letters it will still let you log in.

For example, if your password is MySecretPassword and you enter mYsECRETpASSWORD instead, it will still let you log in.

It turns out I am not the first to notice this. Emil Protalinski noticed this back in September 2011 and, according to his article, this is done by design and there are three different forms of your password FB will recognize:

1. Your original password.
2. Your original password with the first letter capitalized. This is only for mobile devices, which sometimes capitalize the first character of a word.
3. Your original password with the case reversed, for those with a caps lock key on.

I am not comfortable with this because it seriously weakens the password because it reduces the number of unique letter combinations by at least half.

Assume passwords can only be two characters long and must be composed of only the following characters a, b, A, B. Then the total number of unique passwords is 16:

1. aa
2. aA
3. Aa
4. AA
5. ab
6. aB
7. Ab
8. AB
9. ba
10. bA
11. Ba
12. BA
13. bb
14. bB
15. Bb
16. BB

With FaceBook’s password permissiveness, this is reduced to 8 by simply accepting case reversal:

1. aa is the same as AA
2. aA is the same as Aa
3. ab is the same as BA
4. aB is the same as Ab
5. ba is the same as BA
6. bA is the same as Ba
7. bb is the same as BB
8. bB is the same as Bb

The post Security Weakness in FaceBook Login appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

In September 2013, I found myself unable to log into this site.

I would be presented the Login screen, enter my User Name and Password and be brought right back to the same screen.

Logging in with an incorrect user name or password would result in the familiar “No” shake of the login screen.

While this solution worked for me, there may be other reasons why you are not able to log in.

These instructions are for WordPress 3.7.1, but should be the same or similar for other versions, but no guarantee is made.

Logging In Solution #1

http://<your site url>/wp-admin

1) Enter <your site address>/wp-login.php into the URL bar and press Enter. This should bring you to the WordPress login page:

2) Try to log in.

3) If this fails, add (or remove) the www. prefix to your website URL.

If this worked and you are logged in, then go to the step Setting the WordPress and Site Addresses to be the Same

Logging In Solution #2

1) Login to you web hosting account.

2) Start phpMyAdmin.

3) Expand your WordPress database by clicking on the icon:

4) Click on wp_options:

5) Change the URL entries in siteurl and home so that they are both identical (either with a preceding www. or without). Edit the fields by clicking on the Edit label:

Setting the WordPress and Site Addresses to be the Same

:

2) Click on General:

3) Edit the fields WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) to be the same (either with or without a preceding www.):

The post WordPress – Can't Log into your Website appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

These instructions are for Ubuntu 12.04 running the Unity interface.

They may be the same or similar for different versions of Ubuntu, or using a different (GNOME based) GUI interface, but no guarantee is made.

When you install Ubuntu, one of the options you are given is whether to automatically login (go directly to your desktop) or be required explicitly login using your password.

If you have chosen to automatically login, you will boot to your desktop:

You can change this so you go to a login screen instead:

1) Tap the Super (Windows) key to bring up the Dash Interface:

2) Type user accounts in the Dash query field:

3) Press the Enter key. This will automatically launch the User Accounts application.

4) Click on the Unlock icon in the upper right corner (notice that Automatic Login is set to ON:

5) Enter your password and click on Authenticate (or press the Enter key):

6) Slide the Automatic Login slider to OFF:

The next time you logout or restart your computer, you will be prompted to login before proceeding to the desktop.

The post Ubuntu 12.04 – How to Get a Login Screen appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.