5 ms·

Did someone hack Posterous's home page? (update: back to normal)

68 points by giladvdn 15y ago

For some reason it displays some blog by DJ Paul Phusion instead of the regular landing page... Update: seems to back to normal.

wccrawford 15y ago
I would guess that they were doing something experimental and messed up. No reason to think it's a hack.
edandersen 15y ago
Looks like a fake DJ's homepage with Twitter SSL certificate errors on iPad. I would not visit it while logged into Twitter.
- ceejayoz 15y ago
  The Twitter SSL certificate errors appear to be related to the Twitter widgets in the sidebar.
- jonknee 15y ago
  He certainly appears to be a real DJ.
JackWebbHeller 15y ago
I would guess it's some kind of internal error, seeing as the incriminating content is powered by Posterous itself...
drtse4 15y ago
Looks like the main domain is displaying paulphusion.posterous.com. Other subdomains are working as usual. Misconfiguration?
braindead_in 15y ago
As per the tweets it seems that it was because of some domain cloaking/masking thing.
kristofferR 15y ago
Ehe, this is the latest tweets from the DJ, Paul Phusion: paulphusion: @posterous Something went wrong yesterday when I tried to forward my own url to my posterous account. I'm sorry! What was the reason? 17 hours ago paulphusion: @scottgould did I crash posterous? omg! was just trying to forward my domain to my posterous account. I'm sorry! 17 hours ago
- giladvdn 15y ago
  How did his domain change break the main site?
  - chacha102 15y ago
    I believe that is what the site developers are asking themselves at this very moment.
    - ceejayoz 15y ago
      And their managers are asking "how was this not fixed until 18 hours after it happened?"
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - drtse4 15y ago
    They fixed it, btw www.paulphusion.de was still pointing to his old address at 81.169.145.158. I don't know what he did, but it seems that he didn't follow what posterous suggested (adding an A record to its domain pointing at posterous). Sadly i wasn't quick enough to collect more data about posterous.com... Waiting for the official post, i'd say that Paul misconfigured something that they didn't test for that particular input.
kirchhoff 15y ago
Nice exposure for DJ Paul though.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jagtesh 15y ago
If they don't fix it, DJ Paul Phusion will soon be a household name
wofser 15y ago
Reminds me about a big site in (www.bilddagboken.se) Its a site where people can register and post pictureblogs. If I register as ryan the adress to my page would be ryan.bilddagboken.se. After YEARS of running the place (around 800.000 users) someone registered the username "www". This resulted in all visitors that typed www.bilddagboken.se (or used a bookmark) was directly redirected to the user "www" page. His/Hers page had thousandths of angry comments accusing him/her of hacking bilddagboken.se
- mseebach 15y ago
  On the old Twitter, if you had Javascript disabled, clicking "sign out" took you to the Twitter profile of @sign_out (or similar, can't remember).
  - code_duck 15y ago
    Every once in a while, signing into Twitter I get redirected to 'twitter.com/sessions' and instead of it handling my log in, it's an actual Twitter account which is inactive. Pretty odd. I think they finally fixed it...
- ja27 15y ago
  I think people had similar fun when Facebook introduced user names. Didn't someone register the user name "index.html"?
  - chacha102 15y ago
    No. It was default.asp.
vincentchu 15y ago
No hacking here, just a simple misconfiguration in our Rails app. Nothing to see here, move along. ;)
- elliottcarlson 15y ago
  It would actually be interesting in what kind of misconfiguration lead to this - was it a simple DNS misconfiguration that wasn't accounted for?
  - vincentchu 15y ago
    The explanation is really pretty innocuous. We had an unaccounted-for edge case that cached paulphusion.de's pages under our root domain, posterous.com. Like many software bugs, it was an edge case that we didn't foresee, but that happened extremely rarely. We've been running Varnish for the better part of a year, millions upon millions of requests and this was the first time something like this has ever happened. Of course, none of that wipes the egg off of our face. ;)
    - guildchatter 15y ago
      I'll forgive you... this time... =P
    - kevinpet 15y ago
      Hash collision?
totoroDomo 15y ago
YAYAY Its fixed!

68 points by giladvdn 15y ago

For some reason it displays some blog by DJ Paul Phusion instead of the regular landing page... Update: seems to back to normal.

wccrawford 15y ago

I would guess that they were doing something experimental and messed up. No reason to think it's a hack.

edandersen 15y ago

Looks like a fake DJ's homepage with Twitter SSL certificate errors on iPad. I would not visit it while logged into Twitter.

ceejayoz 15y ago
The Twitter SSL certificate errors appear to be related to the Twitter widgets in the sidebar.
jonknee 15y ago
He certainly appears to be a real DJ.

JackWebbHeller 15y ago

I would guess it's some kind of internal error, seeing as the incriminating content is powered by Posterous itself...

drtse4 15y ago

Looks like the main domain is displaying paulphusion.posterous.com. Other subdomains are working as usual. Misconfiguration?

braindead_in 15y ago

As per the tweets it seems that it was because of some domain cloaking/masking thing.

kristofferR 15y ago

Ehe, this is the latest tweets from the DJ, Paul Phusion: paulphusion: @posterous Something went wrong yesterday when I tried to forward my own url to my posterous account. I'm sorry! What was the reason? 17 hours ago paulphusion: @scottgould did I crash posterous? omg! was just trying to forward my domain to my posterous account. I'm sorry! 17 hours ago

giladvdn 15y ago
How did his domain change break the main site?
- chacha102 15y ago
  I believe that is what the site developers are asking themselves at this very moment.
  - ceejayoz 15y ago
    And their managers are asking "how was this not fixed until 18 hours after it happened?"
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- drtse4 15y ago
  They fixed it, btw www.paulphusion.de was still pointing to his old address at 81.169.145.158. I don't know what he did, but it seems that he didn't follow what posterous suggested (adding an A record to its domain pointing at posterous). Sadly i wasn't quick enough to collect more data about posterous.com... Waiting for the official post, i'd say that Paul misconfigured something that they didn't test for that particular input.

kirchhoff 15y ago

Nice exposure for DJ Paul though.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

jagtesh 15y ago

If they don't fix it, DJ Paul Phusion will soon be a household name

wofser 15y ago

Reminds me about a big site in (www.bilddagboken.se) Its a site where people can register and post pictureblogs. If I register as ryan the adress to my page would be ryan.bilddagboken.se. After YEARS of running the place (around 800.000 users) someone registered the username "www". This resulted in all visitors that typed www.bilddagboken.se (or used a bookmark) was directly redirected to the user "www" page. His/Hers page had thousandths of angry comments accusing him/her of hacking bilddagboken.se

mseebach 15y ago
On the old Twitter, if you had Javascript disabled, clicking "sign out" took you to the Twitter profile of @sign_out (or similar, can't remember).
- code_duck 15y ago
  Every once in a while, signing into Twitter I get redirected to 'twitter.com/sessions' and instead of it handling my log in, it's an actual Twitter account which is inactive. Pretty odd. I think they finally fixed it...
ja27 15y ago
I think people had similar fun when Facebook introduced user names. Didn't someone register the user name "index.html"?
- chacha102 15y ago
  No. It was default.asp.

vincentchu 15y ago

No hacking here, just a simple misconfiguration in our Rails app. Nothing to see here, move along. ;)

elliottcarlson 15y ago
It would actually be interesting in what kind of misconfiguration lead to this - was it a simple DNS misconfiguration that wasn't accounted for?
- vincentchu 15y ago
  The explanation is really pretty innocuous. We had an unaccounted-for edge case that cached paulphusion.de's pages under our root domain, posterous.com. Like many software bugs, it was an edge case that we didn't foresee, but that happened extremely rarely. We've been running Varnish for the better part of a year, millions upon millions of requests and this was the first time something like this has ever happened. Of course, none of that wipes the egg off of our face. ;)
  - guildchatter 15y ago
    I'll forgive you... this time... =P
  - kevinpet 15y ago
    Hash collision?

totoroDomo 15y ago

YAYAY Its fixed!