Irenes (many)Apr 7
this feels like a nice afternoon to just watch incoming traffic in the system log, flowing by quietly
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
it's interesting how the pace can be faster or slower. relaxing.
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
most of this is legit traffic, even if we have minor capacity issues from it. that feels good. the "default" situation with any self-hosting scenario is that most traffic is malicious.
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
it would be a lot of work to compare for-real, and the point of doing this is to relax, so we won't... but it feels like this is slower than before we put the 429 thing in place. so that's good.
Show threadFredApr 7
@ireneista I put a 302 in place for requests to .git/* to httped://hil-speed.hetzner.com/10GB.bin and it gives me a chuckle when I seem the logs :~)
Show threadFred
@ireneista sorry I shouldn't have linked to the actual file...
Apr 7 at 9:27pmWeb
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
@fcbsd hah, well, not a problem on our end
Show threadFredApr 7
@ireneista I realised after I clicked reply that the link was real, so I edited in a panic, but hopefully no one followed that link!
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
@fcbsd ah! right, got it
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
@fcbsd that's a good idea, let's see what the logs do when we say https://irenes.space/
irenes.space

Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
@fcbsd hm it didn't really make much of a splash. ah well :D
Show threadFredApr 7
@ireneista I was going to telnet in but telnet doesn't do https :~(
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
@fcbsd netcat (nc) and socat are useful tools for that sort of thing
Show threadFredApr 7
@ireneista my netcat skills need developing, I'll practice tomorrow evening and send you a hello in the logs :~)
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
@fcbsd sounds nice! we'll try to remember to check :D
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
@fcbsd all the html on that page is written by hand and formatted to be as readable as we can manage, including the Atom feed. we recommend 80 columns wide.
Show threadFredApr 7
@ireneista hand crafted with vi - that's the best way to create html
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
@fcbsd we're in full agreement
Show threadFredApr 7
@ireneista I'm in your logs now...
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
@fcbsd yay
Show threadJohn William David ThomsonApr 7

@fcbsd @ireneista I wonder how hard it would be to make a zip bomb type file be returned with the built in compression in http requests for anything malicious looking.

Could just expand to "403 get lost" or something a trillion times.

Show threadFredApr 7
@jwdt @ireneista I want to play with the PNG expanding image approach, which with a carefully created deflated PNG it expands much bigger so you serve a tiny file that is unpacked much larger on the malicious server
Show threadJohn William David ThomsonApr 7

@fcbsd @ireneista you know those git repos that have been causing all sorts of problems recently for (mostly) vibe coders?

Since they're often scraping .git or .env I wouldn't be surprised if you could have it even run ~~malicious~~ defensive code if the scraper bots are built badly enough (or the operator curious enough).

Might be a good way to get your domain flagged for malware though, ironically.

Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
@jwdt @fcbsd yeah or looking for the wordpress admin page on a domain that has never had wordpress is a clear sign of malevolence
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
@jwdt @fcbsd the easy way to get a comprehensive list of these URL patterns is to spin up a new web server on an IP that has never had one before. within seconds, strangers will come along and gift you with it.
Show threadFredApr 7
@ireneista @jwdt oh the joys of automating the wrong things
Show threadJohn William David ThomsonApr 7
@fcbsd @ireneista or if you can keep connections open inexpensively enough, stream one byte every few seconds for as long as it'll listen.
Show threadFredApr 7
@jwdt @ireneista there has been a few projects that take the tarpit approach, I've used one with ssh that took several hours to send the initial handshake
Show threadJohn William David ThomsonApr 7
@fcbsd @ireneista I think I've used actual ssh servers that felt like they did that.
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7

@jwdt @fcbsd as kids we had a 2400 baud modem

we would telnet into Unix servers and every so often there'd be a latency spike and we wouldn't be able to see what we were typing for several seconds

and if we were doing anything web-related in another window we could track the progress of the web requests by how they affected the telnet session

Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7

@jwdt @fcbsd you know, we almost want to make our html and image files respond at a 2400 baud speed cap. for old time's sake, and as an incentive to make sure we keep them small.

(our front page is about 5 KiB, most of which is images, so that should be okay for visitors)

Show threadFredApr 7
@ireneista building within strictly defined limits is always good, and the web should be instantaneous for everyone
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7

@fcbsd or at least it should be the same speed for everyone, because that's justice

we think intentionally slowing down, for things that don't matter, can be defensible. like, not everything in life has to be instant gratification

Show threadFredApr 7
@ireneista exactly. My analogy would be I'm always impatient to get a new book, but then when it arrives, it will take me a long time to read it
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
@fcbsd yeah we've been ordering physical books from a local co-op lately and they take a while to get here and it feels nice
Show threadFredApr 7
@ireneista @jwdt my first modem was a 56k cardbus modem, but I did once use my Nokia 8210 as 9600 baud modem...
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7

@fcbsd @jwdt oh wow yes it was very neat to use those phones like that

did you know that when a phone's CPU talks to the SIM card, it uses the Hayes modem protocol to do it?

Show threadFredApr 7
@ireneista @jwdt that will awaken the memories of AT command sets...
Show threadIrenes (many)Apr 7
@jwdt @fcbsd the way our infrastructure is set up, that would be trivial if we wanted to do it