5 ms·
Crossposting this from another thread: Oh, malarky. Here. I set up a page at http://lab2.gibsonandlily.com/google.html http://lab2.gibsonandlily.com/google.h
by blhack 15y ago
Crossposting this from another thread:
Oh, malarky.
Here. I set up a page at http://lab2.gibsonandlily.com/google.html http://lab2.gibsonandlily.com/google.html
Then I ran it through google translation services. Here is the result in apache's log:
74.125.16.18 - - [13/Jan/2012:10:45:37 -0600] "GET /google.html HTTP/1.1" 200 327 "http://translate.google.com/translate_p?hl=en&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http://lab2.gibsonandlily.com/google.html&usg=ALkJrhjD8_-6RDHslD53lf9XsYx2_J1q4A http://translate.google.com/translate_p?hl=en&sl=fr&... "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.912.75 Safari/535.7,gzip(gfe)
Look familiar? This one is tossing up windows NT, which is strange, but it doesn't seem like a stretch that some of the machines at google for stuff like this are running linux.
The scam here isn't being done by google, it's just a run-of-the-mill scammer scamming and using google's name.
Dearest mocotality. Turning on referals in apache logs and you'll see where on google this is coming from (if you care to).
Here is how:
in: /etc/apache2/apache2.conf (or whereever your apache configuration sits) change the "Logformat" option to the following:
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined
and then use option:
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access_log combined
(or whatever log path you want).
edit: to be clear, I'm not saying that they're using google translate, just demonstrating that "It came from a google IP!" reveals approximately nothing.
edit2: it was pointed out in another thread that google is probably forwarding my user agent to the site that is being translated. This makes perfect sense (duh!) and closes the loop on the story. The scammers are using linux, which is consistent with both networks that they were seeing in their logs.
- JS_startup 15y agoA European Google VP just confirmed that it was not scammers or someone posing as Google, it was Google employees.
- blhack 15y agoSource? edit: source is in boingboing article
- ellyagg 15y agoThis thread stands as a testament to the strong pro-Google bias in the comments section of Hacker News. The bias is hard to prove, as any cultural bias is, but it's nevertheless a tide ebbing against every discussion here. The majority of comments, including the top rated one, were extremely dismissive, e.g., "malarky", and glossed or contorted the facts repeatedly to make it seem as though scammers could have easily been responsible for the evidence trail. It was always beyond unlikely that scammers could have access to a a Google corporate headquarters IP. Nor is, as was claimed in the BoingBoing comments, spoofing IP addresses something that can done without some vanishingly unlikely access to Internet infrastructure.
- JS_startup 15y agoI have a theory that posits that the bulk of HN's subscribership is made up of Google employees who are here to astroturf. Initial test results: inconclusive but promising.
- alphamale3000 15y agoOf course, they have 20% of their work-time to invest in astroturfing HN ;-)
- silverlight 15y agoIndeed, I'm waiting for the (many) naysayers in these comment threads to apologize to the OP. While many preached not getting out the pitchforks and blaming Google until they had a chance to respond, that didn't stop them from immediately providing excuses and reasons why the OP had not done his homework or was full of 'malarky'.
- eurleif 15y ago> It was always beyond unlikely that scammers could have access to a a Google corporate headquarters IP. Did you read your gp? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3461252 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3461252 Google Translate seems to explain this pretty well.
- blhack 15y ago
- AznHisoka 15y agoWhy would Google employees do this? Such risky venture and for what? An extra bonus? Moving up the career ladder? Unless they were doing a startup privately, it makes no sense... why go through such desperate measures? It makes one wonder if people in the search term can manually mess around with the results to promote their own interests.
- JS_startup 15y agoTo get the drop on an emerging market. Obviously the 200 rupee hosting costs are negligible, but becoming the de facto tech provider in an emerging market like Kenya is worth millions.
- dos1 15y agoLooks like you were wrong chief. https://plus.google.com/u/0/115264064268941645500/posts/WfALKwfmCGJ https://plus.google.com/u/0/115264064268941645500/posts/WfAL...