A British software engineer came up with “a fun playful name” for his consulting business. He’d named it:
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Unfortunately, this did not amuse the official registrar of companies in the United Kingdom (known as Companies House). The Guardian reports that the U.K. agency “has forced the company to change its name after it belatedly realised it could pose a security risk.” Henceforward, the software engineer’s consulting business will instead be legally known as “THAT COMPANY WHOSE NAME USED TO CONTAIN HTML SCRIPT TAGS LTD.” He now says he didn’t realise that Companies House was actually vulnerable to the extremely simple technique he used, known as “cross-site scripting”, which allows an attacker to run code from one website on another.
Engadget adds: Companies House, meanwhile, said it had “put measures in place” to prevent a repeat. You won’t be trying this yourself, at least not in the U.K.It’s more than a little amusing to see a for-the-laughs code name stir up trouble, but this also illustrates just how fragile web security can be.
Source: UK Agency Demands Company Stop Using Name Which Includes an HTML Closing Tag – Slashdot
Robin Edgar
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