Brion Vibber
2004-05-21 06:49:26 UTC
On Tomk32's request I've blocked www.themensuche.de (217.172.181.98)
from access to our servers. It was "hosting" German Wikipedia pages by
sending every request on to de.wikipedia.org and slurping the content,
but using it solely for the purpose of bringing in search hits. The text
is never displayed; instead every hit uses a JavaScript redirect through
an intermediary or two to amazon.de.
Pages looked like this:
<html>
<head>
<title>Der Jäger aus Kurpfalz</title>
<script language="javascript">
what = 'site www themensuche de aus';
</script>
<script language="javascript" src="/daten/dat.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/daten/lay.css">
</head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<div id="dat" name="dat">
Friedrich Wilhelm Utsch Friedrich Wilhelm Utsch wurde
[actual content from wiki snipped for brevity]
<center>
<a href="index.html">HOME</a> |
<a href="De.htm">INDEX</a> |
<a href="mailto:webmaster-3d/Iy/***@public.gmane.org">MAIL</a>
<hr>
<p><a href="http://www.google.de/search?q=Der Jäger aus Kurpfalz">SUCHE
BEI GOOGLE</a> | <a href="http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=Der Jäger
aus Kurpfalz">SUCHE BEI MSN</a></p>
<p>
History:<br>
Copyright (c) 2004
<D-E.W-I-K-I-P-E-D-I-A.O-R-G></wiki/Der_Jäger_aus_Kurpfalz><br>
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
A copy of the license is included in the section entitled<br>
<a href="gnu_fdl.txt">"GNU Free Documentation License"</a>.
</p>
</center>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Where the script brought up at the top contains only:
top.location.replace('http://www.steine.de/partnersys/index.html?swi=' +
what)
which if you go there, sends you on to the amazon.de search page. This
script is executed automatically before any content is shown (and the
markup is invalid and nothing at all shows in some browsers even if JS
is disabled). There is no way to read Wikipedia content at that site
short of turning off JavaScript and using 'view source'.
This is not even *vaguely* legitimate. I've cut them off in the IP
firewall on coronelli and browne, so they're no longer able to steal
bandwidth on every page hit just to promote their referrer links.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
from access to our servers. It was "hosting" German Wikipedia pages by
sending every request on to de.wikipedia.org and slurping the content,
but using it solely for the purpose of bringing in search hits. The text
is never displayed; instead every hit uses a JavaScript redirect through
an intermediary or two to amazon.de.
Pages looked like this:
<html>
<head>
<title>Der Jäger aus Kurpfalz</title>
<script language="javascript">
what = 'site www themensuche de aus';
</script>
<script language="javascript" src="/daten/dat.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/daten/lay.css">
</head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<div id="dat" name="dat">
Friedrich Wilhelm Utsch Friedrich Wilhelm Utsch wurde
[actual content from wiki snipped for brevity]
<center>
<a href="index.html">HOME</a> |
<a href="De.htm">INDEX</a> |
<a href="mailto:webmaster-3d/Iy/***@public.gmane.org">MAIL</a>
<hr>
<p><a href="http://www.google.de/search?q=Der Jäger aus Kurpfalz">SUCHE
BEI GOOGLE</a> | <a href="http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=Der Jäger
aus Kurpfalz">SUCHE BEI MSN</a></p>
<p>
History:<br>
Copyright (c) 2004
<D-E.W-I-K-I-P-E-D-I-A.O-R-G></wiki/Der_Jäger_aus_Kurpfalz><br>
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
A copy of the license is included in the section entitled<br>
<a href="gnu_fdl.txt">"GNU Free Documentation License"</a>.
</p>
</center>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Where the script brought up at the top contains only:
top.location.replace('http://www.steine.de/partnersys/index.html?swi=' +
what)
which if you go there, sends you on to the amazon.de search page. This
script is executed automatically before any content is shown (and the
markup is invalid and nothing at all shows in some browsers even if JS
is disabled). There is no way to read Wikipedia content at that site
short of turning off JavaScript and using 'view source'.
This is not even *vaguely* legitimate. I've cut them off in the IP
firewall on coronelli and browne, so they're no longer able to steal
bandwidth on every page hit just to promote their referrer links.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)