If you're living in Saudi Arabia right now, chances are you aren't reading this. About two months ago, I was on the @Home (cable modem) network and wanted to reach a certain site that bans @Home users. So I put a small web proxy called nph-proxy in my CGI directory so I could wing around from my machine through vees.net to that site. Well, the CGI script showed up in my web access logs and got spidered by Google, found by a Saudi Arabian surfing for porn.

So once I realized this (10,000 proxied porn hits, about 1 gig of web traffic, and seven days later) from reading through my web logs, I sent a message to the admins at ISU and told them to track down this user for abusing my site to break through their manditory net-nanny program.

Their response? Since it's coming from the nationwide proxy server, they're going to add vees.net to the banned list. Which is fine, I had already banned all of Saudi Arabia from this side a week before. Later I find out that Saudis would do web searches specifically for nph-proxy and startproxy.cgi, and post their addresses to an IRC server so all their friends could surf porn through it too.

The extracted log file is 2.3 megs, or I would link it up here. Contact me if you'd like to take a look at it.

From: NOC Helpdesk - Kari Mettinen <noc@isu.net.sa>
Subject: Re: Proxy abuse
Cc: proxyreport@isu.net.sa, noc@isu.net.sa
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 01:28:35 +0300 (RUH)
To: Rob Carlson <rob@epistolary.org>

Sorry for delayed reply. We will add your proxy to the blocked list. The address cf1-adapter0 is one of the national-level proxies, so it can be anyone from Saudi-Arabia.

NOC Helpdesk - Kari Mettinen <noc@isu.net.sa>
KACST / ISU, POB 6086 Riyadh 11442, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

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