Weird Firefox/Linux problem


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Yesterday I was trying to get onto Kol's Deviantart page http://-kol.deviantart.com/ but for some reason I couldn't (and still can't) get to it. FF just says "problem loading page... server not found" etc.

Strange thing is, when I boot into Windows I can get to his page just fine in both Firefox and IE.

As a wild guess, I'm wondering about the minus sign in the URL. Could that be throwing things awry?

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Just tried it (running Ubuntu here), doesn't work with the - sign, but take it away and the URL works fine.

Edit: I realize now that the one without the - sign is a different person. Sorry,

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OK, I've found a quick and dirty work-around for this. Just add this to /etc/hosts

198.172.81.21   -kol.deviantart.com

Obviously, you'd have to do the same for any other sites you might come across with this problem.

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Well, it sounds like DeviantArt is allowing a hostname that is not compliant to RFC3696. I saw a post in a different bug tracking system that claimed that urls that start with - could be confused with a command parameter and possibly be exploitable for malicious purposes.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a "fix" that both goes against a long-published standard and also provides opportunity for exploit. :ermm:

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Yeah, I doubt too any kind of fix will ever materialize for this, especially as it could be exploited. Interesting though that Windows users could be vulnerable to this... hmmm....

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Well, it sounds like DeviantArt is allowing a hostname that is not compliant to RFC3696. I saw a post in a different bug tracking system that claimed that urls that start with - could be confused with a command parameter and possibly be exploitable for malicious purposes.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a "fix" that both goes against a long-published standard and also provides opportunity for exploit. :ermm:

hmm I don't know why deviantART allow users to register with a "-".

I have received a lots of email about people that cant get to my deviantart site but I didn't know why. This problem is with Linux right? Because I can login fine with my PC and Mac.

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