Monday 25th September 2023

Topics:

• I am running late this week due to exhaustion.
• Last week, my web search engine greppr.org was attacked by a bot.
• Initially I thought it was real traffic: I seen search queries coming in from multiple IPs, that on first impressions looked like real traffic.
• However the volume was huge! At least, huge for my fledgling service that basically nobody is using.
• On September 18th, I seen 30K additional search queries, and a further 25K on the 19th. I got excited!
• On closer examination however, I could see patterns in the search queries: lots of weird searches for maid and cleaning services, from random IPs and user agent strings, all seconds apart from apparently different users.
• Why did they do this? Perhaps they think they can inject this content into my site?
• The fix: dynamic query string parameters that change daily, using an unpredictable pattern. Now, the bot gets 404 responses (it is still running).
• Good bots should identify themselves via the user-agent header in HTTP requests: this is what the web crawler Greppr uses does, along with the bots from big search engines like Google and Bing.
• Web security remains an arms race.
• What I am working on this week:
  • Blog: "Choose your mentors wisely" - https://techleader.pro/a/614-Choose-your-mentors-wisely
• Media I am enjoying this week:
  • Diaspora by Greg Egan.

Download

techleaderpro-2023-week-38.mp3

File details: 19 MB MP3, 13 mins 10 secs duration.

Title music is "Come 2gether" by Ooyy, licensed via www.epidemicsound.com

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