Passing credentials via URL?

[faineant]

Hi,

I'm looking for a modification that will allow users to log in by passing their username and password through the URL. For example:
www.example.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1&username=foo&password=bar will show thread 1 with the user logged in. I've searched the forums and found many authentication hacks but none of them is suitable. I know it's highly insecured but it's okay.

Thanks!

[Marco van Herwaarden]

This would reduce vB's security in a huge way. Plain passwords are never send to the server. This could be made but i doubt anybody would want to make this for you.

[faineant]

Thanks for your reply MarcoH64. I know it's a serious bleach of security but it does not matter in my case. Anyone?

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Could you please try to explain why you want this, what you want to achieve, maybe we got a better solution for you.

[faineant]

I wish to create a "shortcut" in an application for my users. After clicking on the shortcut, they will be logged in and brought to various parts of the forums as determined by the URL. To add, the URL (with the username and password) will not be visibly shown to the users. Do you have any other ideas to achieve this?

[Marco van Herwaarden]

From where the Username and Password you want to pass in the url come? The user entered this in some part of the originating page, or is it a default value?

[faineant]

The username and password along with the URL is stored in a file that will be read by the application.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

If the page they are coming from, is on the same domain, i suggest you set a cookie for them. There will be no need to sign in then or to pass credentials.

If vBulletin is on the same server, you could also choose to make vB read that password file itself, again no credentials would have to be passed in url.