News Archive: Week 11, 2009

Hello, Subeta! As you may have noticed, some recent security changes we've pushed out to the site have been accompanied by seemingly random blank pages. I've actually heard people calling these "white screens of death," so I thought you all might appreciate an explanation of what causes them, what you should do about them, and how on earth they relate to security.

Blank pages are caused by errors on the page. Ordinarily servers will show the actual error, but it's considered a good practice to hide error messages to avoid giving away sensitive information (what if a password were included in the error?), so errors on Subeta show blank pages.

So what's causing the errors? There are 2 main causes, both of which are related to the recent security fixes we've pushed out. One is a typo in the security fixes. I'm not a perfect typist, and the changes spanned tens of thousands of lines of code, so of course, there were a few mistakes I made ;)

The second cause of errors is apostrophes... they are annoying little things. You probably won't believe me, but apostrophes are rather dangerous to unprotected websites! That's because they have special meaning in the Structured Query Language (SQL) used to communicate with databases. Unless apostrophes are properly escaped (with the backslash... making sense now?), they can cause SQL errors. Just such an error kept the shop buying page from working completely.

Incidentally, Subeta sometimes gets overzealous with escaping apostrophes, and you end up with multiple backslashes... sound familiar?

So what to do about blank pages? If you see a blank page, first check to make sure nobody has reported it in problems and bugs. Then go report it there yourself. If it's urgent (like it's keeping you from doing something important), also send me an email about it at [email protected]. In the email, tell me the exact link to the page you saw it on, as well as what you were doing at the time. Be as detailed as possible.

Anyway, just thought you might appreciate an explanation.

-Alex

It seems the <a href="http://www.subeta.net/explore/hustler.php">Hustler</a> has gotten his hands on a few gold rings. Are you willing to deal with the <a href="http://www.subeta.net/explore/hustler.php">Hustler</a> for one? ;)

Nothing says engagement or even a wedding like spring weather, so why not propose to your special someone with one of these lovely rings? :)

(Only available at the <a href="http://www.subeta.net/shop.php?shopid=32">Accessory Bin</a>!)

Per .

Item adders.

Daily item additions, please?

If there are costume trunks, or sets that need added, just message me and I'll help you add them.

Thank you ❤

Hello everyone! Yes, this is another downtime notice.

Our datacenter has requested a downtime window to perform some hardware configuration changes. They tell us it won't likely take longer than 5 minutes, but they'd like a 3 hour window just in case.

In addition, I have some backup and configuration changes of my own that I need to make, so we're combining all this wonderful downtime into one window.

It's not going to be as bad as you might think. Subeta will be down from 12:30 am Subeta time this morning until when we finish (no later than 4 am I am sure, but likely much earlier. i need sleep, you know! :P)

Feel free to let me know in comments if you have any questions, concerns, etc.

-Alex

First of all, change your password. I suggest changing your password, and keeping a different password on all sites you visit. This is the easiest way to keep your web identity safe.

Second, we've been having some issues over the past few days. If you've clicked a link in the news recently posted from a NPC account taking you to a 'jellyneonews' site, I suggest changing your password on neopets, if you have an account there, as that was what the cookie grabber on that page was geared towards.

We are working to make sure that this stops, and have pushed out hundreds of lines of security updates to all of the files on the site. There may be some blank pages, or errors as a result. If you run into any issues, please report them in the problems and bugs forum. DO NOT fill out a ticket, the UAs will just tell you to go to the Problem and Bug forum, and it wastes everyone's time. ;)Thank you for being patient, we are working on the issue and will keep you updated! :)

Update: Please continue to be cautious about clicking any links to outside sites at this time. And yes, you need to go change your password. We mean it! :P