11.05.07

Restricting access to a blog

Posted in IT, Personal at 12:10 am by Tyler Reguly

Before I head to bed, I decided to read any updated RSS feeds available in bloglines, I had an update for 0x000000.com and the update read:

There is a change, access is no longer allowed by default. Visit the webpage for more info.

That was all, just this cryptic message. So I visited the website and found:

I can understand having issues... RSnake just posted about an attempted hack on his site and I deal with ridiculous amounts of spam and new user sign-ups (all with .ru email addresses) but this is a little much. Now, this form, submitted in plain text is nothing but text fields; requiring name, email, company, username and password (IP address is also asked for, but already populated). The password you type is displayed on your screen (problem #1) and, as I said, submitted in plaintext (problem #2). If you leave a field blank, you are greeted with a question mark ('?'). If you fill in everything it says thank you for your support and that you will be contacted in about '1 week'. If you try more than 3 times, the word 'die' comes up and nothing else.

I actually enjoyed the articles in 'The Hacker Webzine' but why would I want to provide all of that information just to read the articles... I use bloglines for a reason... it's a single tab and I don't have to a) flood my favourites lists with links to blogs and b) go from page to page just to read the latest that people have to say. Now I don't know if I'll even bother continuing to read the site, it's actually an effort, just to read a few blog posts... I hope more bloggers don't get the idea to do something like this... it will very quickly destroy the blogging community.

Update: Apparently this was a bit of a research project. Read more here.

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