Russia invades Ukraine

[Fighting Banana Slug]

1 member and 1410 guests. Cool, cool.

[Johnny Makarov]

1703 guests right now. is that a record?

[btimbit]

7:40am in Moscow, makes sense

[Johnny Makarov]

boom 1747 now!

[photon]

I have noticed the high # of guests viewing the thread at times too and I figured it was just because it was high interest and maybe was popular in some searches...

But I did a bit of digging in the logs and I'm starting to think it's some kind of bot scraping this specific thread.

First I just did a quick search in the logs to find out the top IP addresses making requests to the forum and there's 2 that are far and away more than any other IP. Way more than web crawlers. Both IPs are located in Hong Kong and are owned by Alibaba Cloud HK (a cloud provider).

So I looked at the requests, and they all look like this from the logs:

x.x.x.x - - [31/Mar/2024:04:27:39 -0400] "HEAD /printthread.php?page=160&pp=20&t=186835 HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.2813.123 Safari/537.36"
x.x.x.x - - [31/Mar/2024:04:27:39 -0400] "GET /printthread.php?page=160&pp=20&t=186835 HTTP/1.1" 200 6648 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.2813.123 Safari/537.36
"

printthread.php is to view a thread without all the extra forum formatting, all the printthread log entries I checked (not exhaustive by any means granted) were from these IPs and for this one thread.

t=18835 is this thread

The page numbers are all over the place (and I'm not sure what s= is).

So it looks like some software is setup to scrape this thread constantly. From Hong Kong. ALL the time. WHY?!

Part of me just wants to block the IPs, but do I want to incur the wrath of state level hackers lol.

So weird.

Anyway, going to bed, try not to start an international incident.

EDIT: Hm the s= part doesn't show up for some reason, it looks like /printthread.php?page=4&pp=60& s = 665789674a3a3a21e6bab0fd43ffa1ec &t=186835
It might just be a random salt to prevent the forum software from caching the requests.

[PaperBagger'14]

Maybe the bots owners would enjoy my favourite picture of Putin

[BloodFetish]

Time for the great firewall around China

[Itse]

Originally Posted by photon

I have noticed the high # of guests viewing the thread at times too and I figured it was just because it was high interest and maybe was popular in some searches...

But I did a bit of digging in the logs and I'm starting to think it's some kind of bot scraping this specific thread.

First I just did a quick search in the logs to find out the top IP addresses making requests to the forum and there's 2 that are far and away more than any other IP. Way more than web crawlers. Both IPs are located in Hong Kong and are owned by Alibaba Cloud HK (a cloud provider).

So I looked at the requests, and they all look like this from the logs:

x.x.x.x - - [31/Mar/2024:04:27:39 -0400] "HEAD /printthread.php?page=160&pp=20&t=186835 HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.2813.123 Safari/537.36"
x.x.x.x - - [31/Mar/2024:04:27:39 -0400] "GET /printthread.php?page=160&pp=20&t=186835 HTTP/1.1" 200 6648 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.2813.123 Safari/537.36
"

printthread.php is to view a thread without all the extra forum formatting, all the printthread log entries I checked (not exhaustive by any means granted) were from these IPs and for this one thread.

t=18835 is this thread

The page numbers are all over the place (and I'm not sure what s= is).

So it looks like some software is setup to scrape this thread constantly. From Hong Kong. ALL the time. WHY?!

Part of me just wants to block the IPs, but do I want to incur the wrath of state level hackers lol.

So weird.

Anyway, going to bed, try not to start an international incident.

EDIT: Hm the s= part doesn't show up for some reason, it looks like /printthread.php?page=4&pp=60& s = 665789674a3a3a21e6bab0fd43ffa1ec &t=186835
It might just be a random salt to prevent the forum software from caching the requests.

So Russia (or China I guess, but more likely Russia using a cloud service from HK) is keeping tabs with what is said about the war on social media. This forum is social media, and an easy one to keep up with because it's one static thread.

So let's speculate?

What can you do with information like that? Use it as to create propaganda directed at the West. Some ways include for example identifying things people worry about ans trying to amplify those worries. You can use it to identify common divisions of opinion and try to for example stir that into a fight in the West (turning differences in opinion into groups that hate each other). Just in general, you can use, in theory at least, information from threads like this to create propaganda that supports an opinion that's favorable to Russian interests.

They can also use metrics from threads like this all around the net to measure Western engagement with the war. Less people reading and posting -> less interest in the war -> less likely that the West will keep supporting Ukraine.

....it's so great how the internet has become such a good example of a scifi dystopia.

[Itse]

Or you know, maybe it's a Hong Kong based private company that scrapes the net for information on the war that it will then sell to any intelligence service.

[Cheese]

Unveiling the Truth: The Anatomy of a Failed Invasion Hidden by Successful Disinformation Campaigns. Quick Analysis on russia's Pathetic Military Failure

https://twitter.com/user/status/1775532741452337263


The Falcon-300 (Rotax 914 variant) drone manufactured in Ukraine is reportedly ready for action. Range of 3,300km

https://twitter.com/user/status/1775432388379828591

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by photon

I have noticed the high # of guests viewing the thread at times too and I figured it was just because it was high interest and maybe was popular in some searches...

But I did a bit of digging in the logs and I'm starting to think it's some kind of bot scraping this specific thread.

First I just did a quick search in the logs to find out the top IP addresses making requests to the forum and there's 2 that are far and away more than any other IP. Way more than web crawlers. Both IPs are located in Hong Kong and are owned by Alibaba Cloud HK (a cloud provider).

So I looked at the requests, and they all look like this from the logs:

x.x.x.x - - [31/Mar/2024:04:27:39 -0400] "HEAD /printthread.php?page=160&pp=20&t=186835 HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.2813.123 Safari/537.36"
x.x.x.x - - [31/Mar/2024:04:27:39 -0400] "GET /printthread.php?page=160&pp=20&t=186835 HTTP/1.1" 200 6648 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.2813.123 Safari/537.36
"

printthread.php is to view a thread without all the extra forum formatting, all the printthread log entries I checked (not exhaustive by any means granted) were from these IPs and for this one thread.

t=18835 is this thread

The page numbers are all over the place (and I'm not sure what s= is).

So it looks like some software is setup to scrape this thread constantly. From Hong Kong. ALL the time. WHY?!

Part of me just wants to block the IPs, but do I want to incur the wrath of state level hackers lol.

So weird.

Anyway, going to bed, try not to start an international incident.

EDIT: Hm the s= part doesn't show up for some reason, it looks like /printthread.php?page=4&pp=60& s = 665789674a3a3a21e6bab0fd43ffa1ec &t=186835
It might just be a random salt to prevent the forum software from caching the requests.

God help us all if they're using this site to train AI

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by Itse

Or you know, maybe it's a Hong Kong based private company that scrapes the net for information on the war that it will then sell to any intelligence service.

Either way, CP had made the big leagues! I mean, what are the chances that a random hockey forum catches a foreign power's interest?

[burn_this_city]

We're all being tracked for future liquidation.

[Cheese]

1412 Ruskie BOTs watching our every move!

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Cheese

1412 Ruskie BOTs watching our every move!

#### 'em

[Itse]

Originally Posted by edslunch

Either way, CP had made the big leagues! I mean, what are the chances that a random hockey forum catches a foreign power's interest?

They're spying on everyone, man.

Everyone.

[Wormius]

I guess you could pull an Elon and make the forum closed to outside eyes? Anything special about the pages they’re looking at? Common keywords or specific poster?

[Ozy_Flame]

Hi Ruskies! Slava Ukraini!

[TheIronMaiden]

Hey Bots, you're missing the good thread, hop into the gear grinder, that's where the best discussions are.

[Sluggo]

Those techbros will be scratching their heads when their AI girlfriend app says Fata a lot and has extensive knowledge about Lanny McDonald