this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
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Mildly Interesting

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This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

Just post some stuff and don't spam.

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[–] MantisToboggon@lemmy.world 108 points 3 months ago (6 children)
[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 71 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You put on your robe and wizard hat

[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 50 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Goddamn old people.

Wait. I get that reference. Does that mean I'm an old people?

[–] popekingjoe@lemmy.world 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately. You'll be in the retirement home before you know it with the rest of us.

[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

I'm looking forward to being in a retirement home. Imagine the LAN parties.

[–] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I don't think that's accurate.

[–] scutiger@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

The future is now old men!

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 0 points 2 months ago

xkcd neophytes:

[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 56 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] sundray@lemmus.org 2 points 3 months ago

Sorry, they're in Scunthorpe right now.

[–] Quadhammer@lemmy.world 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm lookin at one right now

[–] Quadhammer@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago

Also don't be in Iran

[–] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago

You really need to get out of Iran.

[–] dumbass@piefed.social 1 points 3 months ago

I dunno, but if you find out, let me know.

[–] Object@sh.itjust.works 37 points 3 months ago (4 children)

My original guess was that they're intercepting DNS, but since boobs is in the path, it wouldn't be sent. How does this work?

[–] sundray@lemmus.org 40 points 3 months ago

Don't know if this is entirely accurate, but Wikipedia has article about it.

[–] BCOVertigo@lemmy.world 20 points 3 months ago

They are giving response codes like 403 so it's not a failure to resolve and I agree it's not DNS... It's behaving differently based on different sub pages so it's something underneath the https encryption. Maybe an intermediary WAF that decrypts? Maybe some weird server side tooling that has govt provided?

I would guess WAF but I'd love to hear from someone who actually knows.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 14 points 3 months ago

It’s either

  • Client side ssl forward proxy (MitM cert installed on client)
  • in-line decryption in the server
  • client side software
  • tls downgrade
  • cert authority compromise
[–] baltakatei@sopuli.xyz 12 points 3 months ago

Right? If it were an unencrypted HTTP GET request, then every router on the way would see the plaintext string boobs in the URL and therefore intercept it.

If I had to guess, Iran has so few landline connections that they man-in-the-middle every TLS connection they can by either forcing every server to hand over their private key files (difficult) or by forcing a certificate authority trusted by default Web browsers (there's a lot of them) to issue certificates for every top level domain they see in SNI data attached to encrypted packet headers; the latter method need not even require participation by Iranian servers, so long as the traffic is bottlenecked for man-in-the-middle attacks and outsiders don't question unusual certificate authorities being used.

[–] SchwertImStein@lemmy.dbzer0.com 32 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] mirshafie@europe.pub 11 points 3 months ago

It was annoying as hell trying to download a LaTeX compiler and having the entire word be blocked, presumably because certain degenerates use latex - the material - for immoral acts.

[–] MadnessForTsar@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)
[–] sundray@lemmus.org 43 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

Presumably because instead of responding to the request for boobs.jpg with with an HTTP 404 error (meaning, "not found"), Iran's censorship tech returns a 403 error (meaning basically "you are forbidden from accessing this resource).

The "boobs" are "forbidden" you see; the tech mirrors the ruling party's moral stance, probably coincidentally. Trying the same curl command in Russia and China will likely just get you a 404 error, so the joke really only works with Iranian servers. The 404 version is slightly less funny: "We couldn't find the boobs!"

[–] fahfahfahfah@lemmy.billiam.net 15 points 3 months ago

Hey, at least they’re using HTTP codes correctly.

[–] murmelade@lemmy.ml 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

They should change it to 80085 error.

[–] otp@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Browsers don't know how to handle 80085

[–] n7gifmdn@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Either do most men now-a-days.

[–] otp@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago

Hah! That's what she said. Poor her.

[–] mirshafie@europe.pub 7 points 3 months ago

It's 403 because they are upfront about the resource being censored as opposed to unavailable, and they tell you who to contact if you have legigimate reasons to access it.

[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Overwhelming majority of countries don't do keyword-based blocking, especially not for incoming requests.

[–] MissingInteger@lemmy.zip 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)
curl -i https://irangov.ir/boobs.jpg # HTTP 200
curl -i https://president.ir/boobs.jpg # HTTP 200
curl -i https://divar.ir/boobs.jpg # HTTP 404

Can't reproduce. The goverment websites don't even handle the error correctly: they give a HTTP 200 and an error page.

Does anyone have an actual working example?

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Lol when I first read your screenshot, I thought for a moment they actually served you boobs.jpg from the government and president sites.

But maybe this is disinformation to make people think servers in Iran aren't?

"Oh boobs.jpg just gives a 404, can't be in Iran!" (When the server is in Iran)

Buddy doesn't even say what domain they figured out was in Iran with this "trick".

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 months ago

First they came for the boobs...