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I accidentally made my link shortener into a malware honeypot

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Re: I accidentally made my link shortener into a malware honeypot

#101

Post by 15457345234 »

codeonline wrote: post #78
JoshTriplett wrote: post #18

What's the benefit of a link shortener, these days? It made sense back before Twitter had one of their own. And I know that some people use it to get link analytics. I've also occasionally seen it used for printed materials, to get pretty URLs that are easy to hand-type. People also use it for malicious purposes, such as hiding malware, or disguising referral links, or otherwise trying to obfuscate where a link is go…

They are useful for links that need to outlive the infrastructure they are hosted on. Think about them as a layer of abstraction. Ie. Links in paper published to a journal like nature. It might be valid for 10 years but the links embedded in it will rot quickly as organisations change cms's, domains names change. Organisations merge and disappear. Also places where the cost to change the url is expensive, bus shelter…

> links embedded in it will rot quickly as organisations change cms's, domains names change. Organisations merge and disappear.

A link shortener doesn't solve any of those problems

Re: I accidentally made my link shortener into a malware honeypot

#102

Post by tpurves »

r0s wrote: post #82
pants2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QR codes provide built-in error correction so will stand up to serious wear-and-tear, partially obscured images, etc. - and it won't confuse O with 0 and i with l

All that is true of regular type as well to some degree, I guess my point is a standard of readable url type could have all those qualities. Also the longer a url is out in physical space the more danger of it being replaced online, longevity may not be desirable.

You are raising all the right points. QR code standards come from an era when cheap digital cameras sensors were MUCH less good than they are now, and similarly when OCR/image-recognition resources were much less cheaply available or built-in to mobile devices.

Re: I accidentally made my link shortener into a malware honeypot

#103

Post by gnicholas »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #18

What's the benefit of a link shortener, these days? It made sense back before Twitter had one of their own. And I know that some people use it to get link analytics. I've also occasionally seen it used for printed materials, to get pretty URLs that are easy to hand-type. People also use it for malicious purposes, such as hiding malware, or disguising referral links, or otherwise trying to obfuscate where a link is go…

I use a link shortener for mailto links that include precomposed to/subject/body. It's handy to have the customer email you, and you reply, since your reply won't ever be marked as spam. If you gathered info via a webform and then emailed the customer, then it would be somewhat more likely to go to spam.

Re: I accidentally made my link shortener into a malware honeypot

#104

Post by gnicholas »

Karellen wrote: post #10

PSA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening#Disadvantages (Also note the difference between the length of the "Advantages" and "Disadvantages" sections)

Many of these disadvantages only apply to shortened links that use foreign TLDs.

Re: I accidentally made my link shortener into a malware honeypot

#105

Post by anotherevan »

david422 wrote: post #25

I've dealt with some spammers to various degrees. I think one of the most effective ways of dealing with spammers is to - "shadowban" them. Allow them to use your service, but don't indicate to them that you've identified them as malicious. For instance, when dealing with chat spammers - allow them to chat, but do not show their chats to other users. Another level would be to allow them to chat, but only show their c…

For some reason the idea of a chat forum where shadow-banned users can see other shadow-banned users strikes me as next level awesome.

Re: I accidentally made my link shortener into a malware honeypot

#106

Post by kapp_in_life »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #18

What's the benefit of a link shortener, these days? It made sense back before Twitter had one of their own. And I know that some people use it to get link analytics. I've also occasionally seen it used for printed materials, to get pretty URLs that are easy to hand-type. People also use it for malicious purposes, such as hiding malware, or disguising referral links, or otherwise trying to obfuscate where a link is go…

As someone who runs a small discussion forum its a great way for people who like to spam CSAM, malware, and other stuff I don't want in a way that gets past filters.

I think a conservative estimate of link shorteners usage is that 99% of cases are used by bad actors, and if they would all die out my life would be a lot easier. But, every week it seems some new one pops up and theres a new wave of spam to deal with.

At least thanks to this post I can add a new one to the filters before a wave of spam, so yay?

Re: I accidentally made my link shortener into a malware honeypot

#107

Post by encom »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #18

What's the benefit of a link shortener, these days? It made sense back before Twitter had one of their own. And I know that some people use it to get link analytics. I've also occasionally seen it used for printed materials, to get pretty URLs that are easy to hand-type. People also use it for malicious purposes, such as hiding malware, or disguising referral links, or otherwise trying to obfuscate where a link is go…

URL shorteners never made sense. Twitter was a dumb artificial limit. In 99,9% of cases, it's only used for tracking or obfuscation purposes. And URL shorteners die every day, leaving ArchiveTeam to clean up the mess again.

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=URLTeam

Re: I accidentally made my link shortener into a malware honeypot

#108

Post by Karellen »

gnicholas wrote: post #104
Karellen wrote: post #10

PSA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening#Disadvantages (Also note the difference between the length of the "Advantages" and "Disadvantages" sections)

Many of these disadvantages only apply to shortened links that use foreign TLDs.

Only 1 out of 6 ("Transnational law") by my count?

Re: I accidentally made my link shortener into a malware honeypot

#109

Post by urbandw311er »

Kudos for the great site and ethos. You still seem pretty buoyed by the experience. Ultimately, I found the article pretty depressing. Your initial free offering with a good UX and relatively little ongoing maintenance was destroyed by an army of criminals. It ended up wiping out weeks of your time developing increasingly complex cat and mouse techniques. Ultimately resulting in you abandoning most of the free plan altogether.

Kinda sad that this is what the online world has become.

And we just put up with it.

Imagine if walking down the road each day was like this – people lining up ready to swindle you or manhandle you in order to steal your things. There would be outrage. But online we have just sort of reached a weird state of acceptance I guess.

Re: I accidentally made my link shortener into a malware honeypot

#110

Post by 63stack »

15457345234 wrote: post #100
63stack wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why shadowbanning would be so effective. It's trivial for any competent spammer to check their submissions from different ip addresses, they will very quickly discover if they are shadowbanned. The risk of misidentifying legit users and shadowbanning them outweighs the potential gain.

> The risk of misidentifying legit users and shadowbanning them What's the risk?

A legit user getting told they are banned can contact the site to try and resolve the issue on why they have been misidentified, getting shadowbanned will possibly never get resolved.
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