[Patch 2.1.0] Fix login to Google Calendar when passwords contain certain characters

[SkUrRiEr]

My Google password contains one of the following characters: \, ^, $, *, ?, ., (, {, [, ], }, )

When I attempt to sync with Google Calendar on my Pre2 running WebOS 2.1.0 and 2.2.4 it fails with an "Unknown Error".

After a lot of hunting and hacking, it turns out that usernames, passwords, and auth tokens are used in regular expressions to censor the log output from the Google Calendar service, and if there are any special characters for regular expressions in either the username, password or auth token, Javascript's regular expression parser chokes on it, and as the upper layers of the service don't know how to handle the error, they give the unhelpful error message.

This patch introduces a new method to the Utils class in the 'utils.js' file which makes these characters regular expression safe and modifies the places where these regular expressions are built to use it.

I've had this running on my phone for ~1 week without any issues - and as this is only used in the authentication setup, and that worked properly, I assume that this is safe.

This has been submitted to WebOS-patches and I'll update here if it's accepted.

I haven't looked yet but it's likely that other default providers have the same issue. I'm happy to produce patches for them, but I'm unlikely to be able to test them properly.

This issue may also exist for other WebOS versions, but as I lack an emulator or proper hardware, I can't test it. If people would check this, I'll attempt to produce patches.

Update: 17/12/2011 22:30 AEST: Confirmed to exist on 2.2.4, working on patch now, Fixed witespace damage in 2.1.0 patch - Sorry for that!

Update: 18/12/2011 00:00 AEST: Actually fixed witespace damage in 2.1.0 patch - Sorry for that!

Update: 18/12/2011 00:15 AEST: Uploaded dev version of 2.1.0 patch - fixed! - I am *not* having a good night!

Update: 15/05/2012 15:00 AEDT: 2.2.4 version uploaded - thanks to sshaka!

[sshaka]

Originally Posted by SkUrRiEr

My Google password contains one of the following characters: \, ^, $, *, ?, ., (, {, [, ], }, )

When I attempt to sync with Google Calendar on my Pre2 running WebOS 2.1.0 and 2.2.4 it fails with an "Unknown Error".

After a lot of hunting and hacking, it turns out that usernames, passwords, and auth tokens are used in regular expressions to censor the log output from the Google Calendar service, and if there are any special characters for regular expressions in either the username, password or auth token, Javascript's regular expression parser chokes on it, and as the upper layers of the service don't know how to handle the error, they give the unhelpful error message.

This patch introduces a new method to the Utils class in the 'utils.js' file which makes these characters regular expression safe and modifies the places where these regular expressions are built to use it.

I've had this running on my phone for ~1 week without any issues - and as this is only used in the authentication setup, and that worked properly, I assume that this is safe.

This has been submitted to WebOS-patches and I'll update here if it's accepted.

I haven't looked yet but it's likely that other default providers have the same issue. I'm happy to produce patches for them, but I'm unlikely to be able to test them properly.

This issue may also exist for other WebOS versions, but as I lack an emulator or proper hardware, I can't test it. If people would check this, I'll attempt to produce patches.

Update: 17/12/2011 22:30 AEST: Confirmed to exist on 2.2.4, working on patch now, Fixed witespace damage in 2.1.0 patch - Sorry for that!

Update: 18/12/2011 00:00 AEST: Actually fixed witespace damage in 2.1.0 patch - Sorry for that!

Update: 18/12/2011 00:15 AEST: Uploaded dev version of 2.1.0 patch - fixed! - I am *not* having a good night!

Please update to the new webOS 2.2.4!!!
I have this problem too!!!

Please!!!

[SkUrRiEr]

Hi,

I actually have a 2.2.4 patch that *in theory* will work, however I was never able to make it work on my device.

A simple and effective workaround is to enable 2-factor authentication in Google Accounts.

I've attached the patch in case you'd like to try to make it work.

Thanks,

Julian Calaby

[sshaka]

Finally I can log in again onto my Google accounts!!!

Thanks 4 the patch.......IT REALLY WORKS on webOS 2.2.4!!!

Update it in the Preware's patches!!!

[spud101]

Can someone please release this for webOS 3.x as well. I'm having the unknown error issue as well and am using a password with a special character!

[SkUrRiEr]

Originally Posted by spud101

Can someone please release this for webOS 3.x as well. I'm having the unknown error issue as well and am using a password with a special character!

I don't have a webOS 3.x device, so I cannot test it.

But the change is pretty simple, I'm sure you could port it over. If you do, feel free to upload it yourself, or if you post it here, I can do it for you.

[spud101]

OK, I might take a look at it myself, but have no experience with webOS patch development myself.