Slashdot is Port Scanning Its Users

Re:Slashdot is Port Scanning Its Users by z92 on Wednesday April 09, 2014 @08:33PM (#7563498)

Why?

That question was asked now ~10 years back. The answer was: to check if the submitter is using an random open proxy server from the net to bypass their IP filter.

From the code

    # If we don't have an IP address, it can't be an open proxy.

And scanning commonly known proxy server ports.

    my $ports = $constants->{comments_portscan_ports} || '80 8080 8000 3128';

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Re:Slashdot is Port Scanning Its Users by xtracto on Wednesday April 09, 2014 @11:39PM (#7564031)

Yeah, I remember reading the same discussion in Slashdot ten or more years go. I also had the reason in the back of my head, thanks for reminding me :). This is nothing new, really. I hope we don't get a submission about how some contemporary CD's from Sony have a rootkit...

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Re:Slashdot is Port Scanning Its Users by NCommander on Wednesday April 09, 2014 @08:41PM (#7563530)

Actually, the "don't have IP address" is a sanity check if this code fired from slashd; if someone coming in from the web interface, the GATEWAY_INTERFACE var is always set by mod_perl.

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