So I sit down at my desktop today and connected to a Windows VM I left running all night. "You're running low on virtual memory..." What? Apparently winlogon.exe is taking 80% of CPU time and has about 400MB of memory in its task. -- WTF #1

After rebooting and verifying that the problem did not continue immediately, I started googling for answers... WTF #2: The second result has a "*" in the domain name. How did that ever get indexed like that?

 

http://www.google.com/search?q=winlogon.exe+high+memory+usage&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

I wonder if perhaps computing.net tried to create a wildcard CNAME and actually had the wildcard returned in the resource record.  If that's the case, then Googlebot isn't validating DNS results and is just taking whatever the DNS server returns and slapping it into the HTTP request.  This makes me think there is a way to exploit this if you got it to spider a site running with custom DNS and HTTP daemons returning arbitrary data..

Brendan Kidwell:

WTF #2: The second result has a "*" in the domain name. How did that ever get indexed like that?

Same way as anything else gets indexed: the google spider found a link to it, followed the link, and indexed the content.

See for yourself if you don't believe me:  http://*.computing.net/

(Also available at http://brendan.kidwell.computing.net/) 

DaveK:

See for yourself if you don't believe me:  http://*.computing.net/

I get a "Page Load Error". This is Firefox 3.0b5, which browser do you use?

mister:

I get a "Page Load Error". This is Firefox 3.0b5, which browser do you use?

mister:

I get a "Page Load Error". This is Firefox 3.0b5, which browser do you use?

You can access it by any name, apparently. Try: i-hate-myself-and-want-to-die.computing.net

 Domain wildcards are dumb.

AbbydonKrafts:

mister:

I get a "Page Load Error". This is Firefox 3.0b5, which browser do you use?

It loaded fine for me, and I'm using Opera 9.27.

Hmm.. so Opera doesn't validate DNS names either? 

smxlong:

Domain wildcards are dumb.

Speak for yourself.  I find them quite awesome. 

mister:

DaveK:

See for yourself if you don't believe me:  http://*.computing.net/

I get a "Page Load Error". This is Firefox 3.0b5, which browser do you use?

While trying to retrieve the URL: http://*.computing.net/

The following error was encountered:

• Invalid URL

smxlong:

You can access it by any name, apparently. Try: i-hate-myself-and-want-to-die.computing.net

 Domain wildcards are dumb.

morbiuswilters:

Hmm.. so Opera doesn't validate DNS names either? 

Domains like this could make certain upcoming specs very interesting...

(Fun fact: Apparently *.com is no valid host name, but ☺.com actually is...)

PSWorx:

Domains like this could make certain upcoming specs very interesting...

(Fun fact: Apparently *.com is no valid host name, but ☺.com actually is...)

Yeah, but technically no browser should accept this as a valid hostname.  That is a bug in Opera and Googlebot (but not IE or FF). 

morbiuswilters:

PSWorx:

Domains like this could make certain upcoming specs very interesting...

(Fun fact: Apparently *.com is no valid host name, but ☺.com actually is...)

Yeah, but technically no browser should accept this as a valid hostname.  That is a bug in Opera and Googlebot (but not IE or FF). 

Works in FF3b5.

MasterPlanSoftware:

morbiuswilters:

PSWorx:

Domains like this could make certain upcoming specs very interesting...

(Fun fact: Apparently *.com is no valid host name, but ☺.com actually is...)

Yeah, but technically no browser should accept this as a valid hostname.  That is a bug in Opera and Googlebot (but not IE or FF). 

 

Works in FF3b5.

Wow.  I wonder if that is a bug or if that is deliberate.  IIRC, FF has supported Unicode domain names for awhile (there was a period where it was removed a few years ago due to phishing) but * is not a valid character. 

morbiuswilters:

Wow.  I wonder if that is a bug or if that is deliberate.  IIRC, FF has supported Unicode domain names for awhile (there was a period where it was removed a few years ago due to phishing) but * is not a valid character. 

I was talking about ☺.com

MasterPlanSoftware:

I was talking about ☺.com

Ahh, yeah, that should work then.