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Note how this means that anyone who is tricked into clicking that link has just blacked-out their entire institution. This has massive potential for abuse.
by Kliment 13y ago
Note how this means that anyone who is tricked into clicking that link has just blacked-out their entire institution. This has massive potential for abuse.
- danieltillett 13y agoI almost wish I was back at uni so I could have some fun with this.
- Kliment 13y agoSpam every academic email with link to "I thought you might find this paper interesting", lockout every university in the world? It only takes one click by one unsuspecting victim per institution. I wonder what would happen if someone includes that DOI in a publication reference. Watch which institutions go dark, and you know who is doing your blind review.
- danieltillett 13y agoYep - the naughtiness you could get up to with this is almost endless. I get the feeling that this will not be with us for much longer as every university in the world is about to get locked out.
- tedks 13y agoUndergrads won't open that link, and grad students and faculty are too busy. To really do damage, you need to create something that'll go viral, and piggyback the link on it. Undergrads will click anything that looks fun. Make it look fun and you're golden.
- mikeash 13y agoIf you're up for a little fraud, get a list of faculty and undergrad e-mails and send e-mails to undergrads purporting to be from faculty saying, "Please read this and be ready to discuss in class on Monday." The hit rate will be low, but you're bound to get a few students who really do have that professor's class on Monday and will click it.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- MichaelGG 13y agoYou wouldn't need to click the link. Just include it on another page as an img src. Right?
- userbinator 13y agoThings like signatures on forums visited by university students are the first to come to mind. Embed it through one of the many referer-stripping redirectors out there, and none could be the wiser...
- ams6110 13y agoSend it to the adminstrative staff then, they spend about 50% of their day surfing.
- dsl 13y agoThat isn't true. http://blog.codinghorror.com/preventing-csrf-and-xsrf-attacks/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/preventing-csrf-and-xsrf-attack...
- tghw 13y agoYou're assuming the creator of the spider trap also put in CSRF protections. However, if you read the article, you'll see that it is only a link, with no CSRF protection at all. Therefore, it is quite true that spamming research mailing lists could lock a lot of people out. In fact, since this spider trap is triggered on a GET request, you would just need to embed the link as an image, script, or stylesheet and get the target to visit a page.
- yahelc 13y agoYou could even embed the URL as an image in the email, and if images are enabled, it would trigger a GET request.
- naich 13y agoThey have posted a reply here: http://www.asihcopeiaonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1046/9999-9999.99999 http://www.asihcopeiaonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1046/9999-9999.99...
- throwaway13qf85 13y agoAppropriately, "The requested article is not currently available on this site."
- nitrogen 13y agoThat looks like the spider trap link.
- naich 13y agoThat's the joke.
- nitrogen 13y agoThis sort of Slashdot-esqe misdirection is not exactly appropriate on HN. It starts with black-holing universities with a link mislabeled as a response, but could quickly devolve into misdirections to other black holes of Slashdot that (I assume) we really don't want here.
- sebcat 13y agoAs a user of HN, don't tell me or others what's appropriate, thanks.
- dang 13y agoNitrogen is right. This sort of Slashdot-esqe misdirection is not exactly appropriate on HN.
- user24 13y agoNot to mention the fact that if someone at a university does click the link, they could ruin any number of people doing research there. That includes undergrads doing a last-minute reference to their thesis and tenured professors about to cure cancer.