supplanted by a deathly paleness his hand?

March 16, 2006 4:07 PM

I have been receiving experimental poetry through my blog. Who is sending it and why?

I have a contact form on my blog, which is rarely used. Of late, however, I've been receiving strange, nonsensical messages through it. I'm assuming it's automated somehow, because the messages declare themselves multi-part (they come in batches, although they don't seem to have any content in common).

I've put some together into a single prose poem. Keep in mind that each paragraph is the entirety of a single post:

vridge, who was down there f r tin minyits wanst an spoke very highly an

it began to show itself there among the little wooden houses. t is a road hewn out of the rocks. he giant apoleon carried it through the backbone of the earth. he eagle, apoleon s bird, flew like a living armorial crest over the gigantic work of the

small yacht belonging to the merchant lay, just unladen, near the bridge of boats. tto found aren and the young lady from olstebro sitting in the arbor. omewhat

distinct streets and quarters, so had they also here. he street which led to the market place, and which in every day life was called the hoemaker treet, answered perfectly to its name. he shoemakers had ranged their tables side by side. hese, and

were colored with a sudden crimson, which was immediately afterward supplanted by a deathly paleness his hand

acknowledgments for the honor they

find out my real sister will have proof in hand of the truth will show myself as a brother will care for her future ring to me her baptismal register bring to me one only attestation of its reality and that before eight days are past ere is

demands his right replied tto, and pressed the man s hand. hings go, doubtless, well with you, orten hraenseu he whole cart full of eels, and some smoked carp t is also good to meet with you, r. tto. pon the

WTF is going on? I'm not complaining, mind you. I find them very entertaining. I'm just curious.

posted by brundlefly to computers & internet (7 answers total)

Are there links embedded anywhere within these messages?
posted by danb at 4:19 PM on March 16, 2006

Someone warming up their new comment-spam engine?
posted by Ken McE at 4:19 PM on March 16, 2006

http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/34382

?
posted by fire&wings at 4:23 PM on March 16, 2006

I concur with fire&wings.

I get dozens of these a day (via e-mail), and those are only the ones that have passed through the filters. Most contain no links. I'm sure it will make sense someday, but it doesn't right now.
posted by bh at 4:35 PM on March 16, 2006

Yeek! From fire&wings link:

We had loads of similar e-mails like that too, and I thought they were harmless. After a week or two, our web host informed us that they had to disable our website due to spammers utilizing injection attacks to send mass mails.

Turns out that the series of mails sent out earlier, similar to what you've received, is a round of "testing" to find out if the injection is possible on your scripts.

I don't like the sound of that at all. Full disclosure: I know some basic web design, but PHP and whatnot is pretty much beyond me. Any tutorials around for dealing with this kind of stuff (in WordPress), or should I just get rid of that form?
posted by brundlefly at 4:37 PM on March 16, 2006

Well the other thread has pretty much covered it. The viable options basically boil down to:

• If you wrote the script yourself, ensure that no header injection attacks are possible by being absolutely sure you sanitize whitespace in all the fields and hard-coding the destination.
• If you're using somebody else's script, look at its source or research its history to see if its author did the proper sanitization.
• Switch to a script where the above is assured.
• Remove the script.

posted by Rhomboid at 6:12 PM on March 16, 2006

Don't let this go to waste! A la Spamusement, compile these somehow, for the good of the public!
posted by Lockeownzj00 at 5:13 AM on March 17, 2006