On Tue, 7 Jan 2003, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:

> On Tue, 7 Jan 2003, Nadav Har'El wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Jan 06, 2003, Daniel Feiglin wrote about "Re: Home Page Failure":
>
> > We can make a game out of it, to find the shortest useragent string that
> > will invoke this bug. For example,
> >
> > $ curl -i -s -A "Mozilla/" http://jobinfo.co.il/
> >
> > also gives the same internal server error.
>
> A real nice game could be if a page is not accessible due to a silly
> formatting error, and you can make it accessible thrugh your own modifying
> proxy. This may not apply in this case, but other pages come to mind.
>
> You could make the page accessible only to browsers that can't view their
> page properly (except adds). And then let them complain that you deny
> customers from their page...

In the case of JobInfo, it seems that all such a proxy has to do is to
change the UserAgent string of konq-based browsers. But still no point in
proxying for mozilla users.

If someone feels like having fun with such companies (and knows how to
keep the server from being abused), here is how it can be implemented:

* A proxy server allows only to specific users (identified by their
  user-agent string) access specific sites through it. Those sites are
  sites that apper on a public list of "non-accissble sites", like the one
  in mozilla.org.il.
* The proxy provides an automatic proxy configuration script (a .pac
  file). This pac file will tell browsers to search in this proxy only for
  those sites, and therwise use DIRECT.
* Thus the list canbe dynamically updated. And the server is less exposed
  to abuses, because it will not proxy to anywhere (but still: from
  anywhere)

* A site gets into the list only if it is deliberitely inaccessible to
  users of certain browsers (artificial user-agent checks) or half-broken
  sites that can be fixed using a filtering proxy (that would indeed take
  much more work)
* It must be clear that the users accessing the site thrugh the proxy
  could not have accessed it previously (or have had to go through much
  more trouble.. Thus the proxy is not intended t take hits from the
  original site (recall that a filterring proxy is in a position t block
  adds)
* Thus if the original site becomes accessible, it must not be available
  through the proxy.

Anybody wants to do such a thing?

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir

=================================================================
To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Reply via email to