URL going to WAY Wrong Page

cytorak

I work on a school's website. Today, I've gotten two phone calls with an issue. All of a sudden, the URL that normally goes to the school's index page, now leads visitors to a different school's page.

Anyone ever heard of this?

Moses555

Has the host for the site swapped in another schools pages by accident? Is the DNS wrong and the name is redirecting to a different school?

Bowen

Something tells me some kids found out the FTP information and updated the site.

Moses555

bowen wrote: »

Something tells me some kids found out the FTP information and updated the site.

Just swapping in another school's site doesn't seem malicious enough. It's certainly not what I would have done given the opportunity.

Bowen

Ah yes, children are dumb though. Most likely to see what they could get away or how long it'd be to notice it. Or bragging rights.

exoplasm

If you PM me the URLs that are problematic I can help you figure it out. I used to work at a web host and found this being caused by hacked sites (redirect code) or misconfigured sites in apache.

flatlinegraphics

swapping another schools site in is non trivial... if they kids did that, i'd give them a round of applause and a passing grade for in IT for the rest of the year. more so if there is any dynamic content...

sounds like a dns issue. can you post the two urls? if you'd rather not, are both schools hosted on the same server? are they hosted on a local box, or a remote host? is this happening for everyone, or just some people? make sure your hosting bill is paid, make sure your namehost bill is paid, make sure your dns records are correct, make sure there are no custom hosts files (that a kid could do easily), make sure your host is configured correctly..

this is a problem that can have toooooons of different causes, anywhere down the line from the host computer, to their isp, to one of the telcos to your isp, to your internal network, to you actual computer. dns is black magic, and the fact that it works at all is sometimes a wonder.

tl;dr: we need more info.

exoplasm

By the way, it's not like this is it? http://robozen.com/technology/rubyonrailsorg-parked/

The college chick is the best troll ever. I've seen lots of sites suddenly become "some college website" when people forgot to renew their domain.

I'd Fuck Chuck Lidell Up

bowen wrote: »

Ah yes, children are dumb though. Most likely to see what they could get away or how long it'd be to notice it. Or bragging rights.

are you kidding? this sounds like something i would do back in my high school days. it's barely noticeable so most people aren't going to catch it, and it's tricky to do around school blocks so it shows you have skill. it's one of those things where all the computer kids have a laugh and the school admin is left running around fixing it.

it's also not big enough to get the person (when they are caught) into serious trouble, like rerouting to a porn site would.

it's genius

if you ever find the kid that did it, hi5 him for me

flatline has this one nailed, we need a lot more info, and possibly the websites for both schools.

my bet's still on some computer kid having a good laugh

Bowen

I wasn't kidding.

I also don't think it's funny in the slightest.

Richard M. Nixon

sounds like your domain registration may have run out

cytorak

Everything is fixed now (huzzah!). The service provider was helping the other school migrate their email to Google Apps, and someone at the ISP inputted our domain information as the other school's. When I spoke to the ISP rep, she sounded like she was about to vomit as how fucked up our information was because of this guy.

"Are you trying to sign up for Google Apps?"

"No...?"

"Oh...oh my god; this is awful. This is the worst mess I've ever seen."

Luckily, she got it straightened out, and it was not teh haxxors, but I got to spend my afternoon and this morning listening to a bunch of parents meow-meowing that they couldn't check the website.

exoplasm

cytorak wrote: »

Everything is fixed now (huzzah!). The service provider was helping the other school migrate their email to Google Apps, and someone at the ISP inputted our domain information as the other school's. When I spoke to the ISP rep, she sounded like she was about to vomit as how fucked up our information was because of this guy.

"Are you trying to sign up for Google Apps?"

"No...?"

"Oh...oh my god; this awful. This is the worst mess I've ever seen."

Luckily, she got it straightened out, and it was not teh haxxors, but I got to spend my afternoon and this morning listening to a bunch of parents meow-meowing that they couldn't check the website.

Holy shit what ISP is this that lets someone change someone else's website just because its a similar type of site? Good thing they fixed it, but WTF?

flatlinegraphics

exoplasm wrote: »

cytorak wrote: »

Everything is fixed now (huzzah!). The service provider was helping the other school migrate their email to Google Apps, and someone at the ISP inputted our domain information as the other school's. When I spoke to the ISP rep, she sounded like she was about to vomit as how fucked up our information was because of this guy.

"Are you trying to sign up for Google Apps?"

"No...?"

"Oh...oh my god; this awful. This is the worst mess I've ever seen."

Luckily, she got it straightened out, and it was not teh haxxors, but I got to spend my afternoon and this morning listening to a bunch of parents meow-meowing that they couldn't check the website.

Holy shit what ISP is this that lets someone change someone else's website just because its a similar type of site? Good thing they fixed it, but WTF?

well, it sounds like really bad error but the guy was probably scanning down the hosting sheet and copied the wrong school and pasted it into a config. have a server full of schools, its easy to grab the wrong one. esp on a colo or a shared , where there might be every school in the state. we don't know the names of the schools in question, so it may have been "jefferson memorial school" vrs "johnson memorial school" and just got things transposed in his head, or the id/po/job numbers where similar.

esp when the other school started calling the isp about why google apps wasn't working yet.

urahonky

cytorak wrote: »

Everything is fixed now (huzzah!). The service provider was helping the other school migrate their email to Google Apps, and someone at the ISP inputted our domain information as the other school's. When I spoke to the ISP rep, she sounded like she was about to vomit as how fucked up our information was because of this guy.

"Are you trying to sign up for Google Apps?"

"No...?"

"Oh...oh my god; this is awful. This is the worst mess I've ever seen."

Luckily, she got it straightened out, and it was not teh haxxors, but I got to spend my afternoon and this morning listening to a bunch of parents meow-meowing that they couldn't check the website.

HAHAHAHAH!!