I prefer having the time listed on the “edit posts” page under the WordPress admin area, instead of just the date of the post. Usually the URL you see this is something like (WP-base)/wp-admin/edit.php. I don’t see a hook to manage this format, so I couldn’t write a plugin. (If there is a hook, please […]
Archive of posts filed under the Technology category.
Verizon Updating Their TOS Again
I just received an email letting me know that Verizon is again changing their terms of service. It’s interesting that the first item listed below means they are changing their privacy policy and are going to share your account and identifying info if they even think you’re doing Bad Stuff. I wonder what was wrong […]
Comment Spam Rate
As I mentioned yesterday when I noticed I passed the 30,000 spam comment threshold, the comment spam rate on the blog has gone through the roof. I dug out some of my old backups of my WordPress database and generated this chart showing how many spam comments I’ve received. This chart is from December 14, […]
Akismet 30,000th Spam Comment
I just deleted my 30,000th comment spam. I have no idea how high the count would have been had I not put into place several techniques that automatically block bad commenters. Those that fall into my traps don’t even get entered into the Akismet system, and so aren’t counted. (Addendum 9:32pm: The count is now […]
Protecting WordPress With Fingerprints
I. Background Recent attacks against the WordPress Content Management System have prompted reminders of the recommendation that you should make sure you are running the newest version of the WordPress system. When you download WordPress, you can also download the WordPress MD5 signature so that you can double check that the downloaded file has not […]
What Is This? A WordPress Attack Using “PLM”
One of my sites had this very odd entry in it’s log from overnight: (actual URL changed) http://www.example.com/2005/06/24/title-in-here/%2B%25255bPLM=0%25255d%2BGET%2Bhttp:///2005/06/24/title-in-here/%2B%25255b0,16925,26735%25255d%2B-%25253e%2B%25255bN%25255d%2BPOST%2Bhttp:/wp-comments-post.php%2B%25255b0,0,349%25255d If you do the hexadecimal recoding a couple times you end up with: http://www.example.com/2005/06/24/title-in-here/+[PLM=0]+GET+http:///2005/06/24/title-in-here/+[0,16925,26735]+->+[N]+POST+http:/wp-comments-post.php+[0,0,349] And if you assume the plus marks are actually spaces: http://www.example.com/2005/06/24/title-in-here/ [PLM=0] GET http:///2005/06/24/title-in-here/ [0,16925,26735] -> [N] POST http:/wp-comments-post.php [0,0,349] What is this […]
TV Converter Box Coupon
I still watch TV using regular old rabbit ears. We have two TVs in the house, one in the living room, and one in the basement. They work fine, and are each over 15 years old. So a couple months ago when the U.S. Department of Commerce allowed people to apply for up to two […]
Setting the WordPress 2.5 Secret Key
I’ve been exploring the WordPress 2.5 Release Candidate 1. I found a few bugs that are probably related to AJAX or javascript under Safari 3.04. I made a few suggestions and comments for part of the new design aspect of the Administrative section. But one interesting thing I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere is WP 2.5’s […]
ShaBlastBot Spider Considered Abusive
While perusing my apache logs, I ran across a lot of requests from a bot with the user-agent of “ShablastBot 1.0” and all came from the IP address of 67.228.100.141. Reverse IP shows that 67.228.100.138 67.228.100.139 67.228.100.140 and 67.228.100.142 also resolve to shablast.com. One significant problem appears to be it doesn’t correctly parse out feed: […]
Comment Spam Increase This Week
Has anyone else noticed a large increase in the amount of comment spam that Akismet is missing this week? I’ve tagged and deleted more comment spam in the past week than I have in the past 6 months. I would guess across all of my WordPress sites, I’m manually tagging 10 messages a day. That […]