4 ms·

Not that you’d do it, but the temptation there is always to repoint your real application to a different URL and change the original image to something subtly N

Not that you’d do it, but the temptation there is always to repoint your real application to a different URL and change the original image to something subtly NSFW.

o_m 4y ago
Or something less malicious, like "Donate to Wikipedia", or some other organization.
- Someone 4y ago
  > Or something less malicious, like "Donate to Wikipedia", or some other organization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Wikipedia: “Wikipedia has been blocked in China since 23 April 2019” ⇒ putting ads for Wikipedia on sites likely isn’t safe everywhere. I think it will be very hard to find “some other organization” that is universally ‘approved’ everywhere.
Raed667 4y ago
I was debugging a similar issue where a small marketplace run by a friend was being scrapped and the listings were being used to make a competing marketplace look more active than it actually was. The thing is, they didn't host the scrapped images themselves, they just hot-linked everything. So through a little nginx config, we turned their entire homepage to an ad for my friend's platform :)
- the8472 4y ago
  I assume you mean scraped, not scrapped.
  - CamelRocketFish 4y ago
    Nope, meant scrapped
timbit42 4y ago
Been there. Done that. Someone had used our image in their phpBB signature. The hits slowed quite quickly.
magic_hamster 4y ago
...or a nice steak.
neilv 4y ago
In case anyone is inspired to do related things, I made a mistake once (troubling and embarrassing), which I'll mention in case it helps someone else avoid my mistake... In earlier days of the Web, someone appeared to have hotlinked a photo from a page of mine, as their avatar/signature in some Web forum for another country, and it was eating up way too much bandwidth for my little site. I handled this in an annoyed and ill-informed way, but which I thought was good-natured, and years later realized it was potentially harmful. I'd changed the URL to serve a new version of the image, to which I'd overlaid text with progressive political slogans relevant to their country. (Thinking I was making a statement to the person about the political issues, and that it would be just a small joke for them, before they changed their avatar/signature to stop hotlinking my bandwidth.) Years later, once I had a bit more understanding of the world, I realized that was very ignorant and cavalier of me, and might've caused serious government or social trouble for the person. Sensitized by my earlier mistake, I could imagine ways that a subtly NSFW image could cause problems, especially in the workplace, and in some other cultures/countries.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Yeah, you could get someone gulag'd pretty easily if you wanted to and they were in the right location. Subtle things like flipping the image upside down or reversing the colors or other "not quite harmful but quite annoying" responses are probably better, or just serve a 1x1 pixel image of nothing.
- xwdv 4y ago
  My mind must be in a dark place because once you mentioned politics I thought of how just sitting at home I could easily come up with some kind of image that could literally imprison or kill some one off from thousands of miles away, without even getting up from the couch. I think I spent most of my internet youth lusting for such power.
- trinovantes 4y ago
  Some Japanese porn makers avoid getting pirated in China by placing politically sensitive content in the backgrounds
fangril67 4y ago
kevingadd 4y ago
A startup I used to work for had a horror story from before I started, where a small .png file had been accidentally hotlinked from a third party server. The png showed up on a significant % of users' custom homepages (think myspace, etc). At some point the person operating the server decided that instead of emailing someone or blocking the requests, they'd serve goatse up to a bunch of teenagers and housemoms. Mildly hilarious depending on your perspective, I guess?
lifthrasiir 4y ago
This once happened in a particular South Korean news website where it shamelessly stole and hot-linked to a JavaScript file in a third-party website. The domain owner responded it by replacing the file, and the website in question had a warning message and tilted [1] for a while. [1] https://twitter.com/dohoons/status/880347968800411648 https://twitter.com/dohoons/status/880347968800411648
bawolff 4y ago
Wikipedia is anyone can edit. It wouldn't be the first time someone did something like that.

Not that you’d do it, but the temptation there is always to repoint your real application to a different URL and change the original image to something subtly NSFW.

o_m 4y ago

Or something less malicious, like "Donate to Wikipedia", or some other organization.

Someone 4y ago
> Or something less malicious, like "Donate to Wikipedia", or some other organization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Wikipedia: “Wikipedia has been blocked in China since 23 April 2019” ⇒ putting ads for Wikipedia on sites likely isn’t safe everywhere. I think it will be very hard to find “some other organization” that is universally ‘approved’ everywhere.

Raed667 4y ago

I was debugging a similar issue where a small marketplace run by a friend was being scrapped and the listings were being used to make a competing marketplace look more active than it actually was. The thing is, they didn't host the scrapped images themselves, they just hot-linked everything. So through a little nginx config, we turned their entire homepage to an ad for my friend's platform :)

the8472 4y ago
I assume you mean scraped, not scrapped.
- CamelRocketFish 4y ago
  Nope, meant scrapped

timbit42 4y ago

Been there. Done that. Someone had used our image in their phpBB signature. The hits slowed quite quickly.

magic_hamster 4y ago

...or a nice steak.

neilv 4y ago

In case anyone is inspired to do related things, I made a mistake once (troubling and embarrassing), which I'll mention in case it helps someone else avoid my mistake... In earlier days of the Web, someone appeared to have hotlinked a photo from a page of mine, as their avatar/signature in some Web forum for another country, and it was eating up way too much bandwidth for my little site. I handled this in an annoyed and ill-informed way, but which I thought was good-natured, and years later realized it was potentially harmful. I'd changed the URL to serve a new version of the image, to which I'd overlaid text with progressive political slogans relevant to their country. (Thinking I was making a statement to the person about the political issues, and that it would be just a small joke for them, before they changed their avatar/signature to stop hotlinking my bandwidth.) Years later, once I had a bit more understanding of the world, I realized that was very ignorant and cavalier of me, and might've caused serious government or social trouble for the person. Sensitized by my earlier mistake, I could imagine ways that a subtly NSFW image could cause problems, especially in the workplace, and in some other cultures/countries.

bombcar 4y ago
Yeah, you could get someone gulag'd pretty easily if you wanted to and they were in the right location. Subtle things like flipping the image upside down or reversing the colors or other "not quite harmful but quite annoying" responses are probably better, or just serve a 1x1 pixel image of nothing.
xwdv 4y ago
My mind must be in a dark place because once you mentioned politics I thought of how just sitting at home I could easily come up with some kind of image that could literally imprison or kill some one off from thousands of miles away, without even getting up from the couch. I think I spent most of my internet youth lusting for such power.
trinovantes 4y ago
Some Japanese porn makers avoid getting pirated in China by placing politically sensitive content in the backgrounds

fangril67 4y ago

kevingadd 4y ago

A startup I used to work for had a horror story from before I started, where a small .png file had been accidentally hotlinked from a third party server. The png showed up on a significant % of users' custom homepages (think myspace, etc). At some point the person operating the server decided that instead of emailing someone or blocking the requests, they'd serve goatse up to a bunch of teenagers and housemoms. Mildly hilarious depending on your perspective, I guess?

lifthrasiir 4y ago

This once happened in a particular South Korean news website where it shamelessly stole and hot-linked to a JavaScript file in a third-party website. The domain owner responded it by replacing the file, and the website in question had a warning message and tilted [1] for a while. [1] https://twitter.com/dohoons/status/880347968800411648 https://twitter.com/dohoons/status/880347968800411648

bawolff 4y ago

Wikipedia is anyone can edit. It wouldn't be the first time someone did something like that.