[IP] 'homeland.fbi.gov' visits dozens of Weblogs

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Chris Gulker <cg@gulker.com>
Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2003 16:51:40 -0800
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: 'homeland.fbi.gov' visits dozens of Weblogs

Dave-

Think computer scientists may appreciate this mystery:

Starting on April 2, dozens (maybe hundreds by now) of bloggers began seeing
a referrer of 'homeland.fbi.gov' in their http server logs. Here are the
entries from my log for http://www.gulker.com/ :

66.12.154.134 - - [02/Apr/2003:19:21:10 -0800] "GET /2002/12/16.html
HTTP/1.0" 200 26489
"http://homeland.fbi.gov/Watchlists/suspect/view.jsp?record=895754";
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5)"

66.12.154.134 - - [02/Apr/2003:19:51:54 -0800] "GET
/categories/WeblogMetrics/ HTTP/1.0" 200 31173
"http://homeland.fbi.gov/Watchlists/suspect/view.jsp?record=948082";
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5)"

Note the /Watchlists/suspect/view.jsp?record=xxxx looks like some sort of
spooky database. However homeland.fbi.gov doesn't resolve to an IP address.

Some of the blogs, including my own voice or point to anti-war sentiments
(let's hear it for the 1st Amendment!): others have no opinion one way or
the other.

One such site, among the first to be hit, is programmer Brent Simmons blog,
where he has an interesting conversation about faking referrers, prank
scripts etc.:

http://inessential.com/?comments=1&postid=2462

On the other hand, a London-based journalist, Roger Ridey, dug up a page of
congressional testimony by the CIA director referring to the creation of a
database of Watchlists:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_hr/062702tenet.html

Anyway, be interesting to hear from expert IPers. The incoming IP address
maps to a DSL account, and the machine in question responds to http
requests.

Best,

Chris
-- 
Chris Gulker
cg@gulker.com
http://www.gulker.com/









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