Re: URI::Heuristic

acassin@cs.mu.oz.au
Tue, 28 Oct 1997 11:29:48 +1100 (EST) 

Folks,

I just noticed an article in the latest comp.risks digest which is
relevant for URI::Heuristic (and its users).

Andrew Cassin
acassin@cs.mu.oz.au

--- from comp.risks 19.42 ---

Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 17:03:22 +0100 (BST)
From: dom@inta.net
Subject: When taking a guess isn't so smart

Having in the past given up with the domain name private.org due to
the amount of irrelevant e-mail I received to it, you would have
thought I would know better.

I own the domain name HTTP.ORG. The web site for that domain has
always received a fair amount of seemingly random hits, presumably
from people mistyping URLs and having their domain suffix search
order including ORG.

Recently however I have noticed a dramatic increase in the number
of hits to www.http.org, so I decided to investigate further. Looking
at the access logs, it did appear that the recent upsurge in hits
could also attributed to mistypes. But why the very recent increase ?
The common link is Lynx web browser 2.7.1.

It would appear that the latest version of Lynx likes to pretend to
be clever and guesses at a URL if it doesn't receive a response from
the host that you typed. Unfortunately this means that a request for
any of the following typos:

  lynx http//:www.somedomain.com
  lynx http//www.somedomain.com
  lynx http/:www.somedomain.com
  lynx http/www.somedomain.com

Will result in Lynx trying...

  Looking up 'http' first.
  Looking up 'www.http.com', guessing...
  Looking up 'www.http.edu', guessing...
  Looking up 'www.http.net', guessing...
  Looking up 'www.http.org', guessing...
  Getting http://www.http.org//www.somedomain.com

At which point my site is queried.

The risks are obvious. Confusion reigns and I receive a constant flow of
hate e-mail from users all around the world who think that I have hijacked
the web sites they are trying to reach. *sigh*

Dominic J. Hulewicz - mailto:dom@inta.net - http://www.intanet.com/dom

  [Dominic CC:ed a lynx development list on this contribution.
  I have carefully removed that address here, but am now getting
  copied on requests to be removed from that list!  I never sausage lynx 
  before.  PGN]