On Tue, Feb 01, 2005 at 03:51:16PM +0000, Paul Reilly wrote:
>> A Londonder made a tsnuami-relief donation using lynx -- a text-based
> browser used by the blind, Unix-users and others -- on Sun's Solaris
> operating system. The site-operator decided that this "unusual" event in
> the system log indicated a hack-attempt, and the police broke down the
> donor's door and arrested him. From a mailing list:
>> For donating to a Tsunami appeal using Lynx on Solaris 10. BT [British
> Telecom] who run the donation management system misread an access log and
> saw hmm thats a non standard browser not identifying it's type and it's
> doing strange things. Trace that IP. Arrest that hacker.
It could just be me but I find a number of things about this story
to be a bit unlikely.
For a start, BT a) don't strike as that clueless nor b) that fast to deal
with a hack attempt. Nor is it likely BT were loooking at the accesslog
as opposed to a piece of software that processes logs - and it strikes me
as very unlikely that such a piece of software would fail to recognise
Lynx.
Thomas
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