"Expert" Security



  • I think this may have been metioned on the forums before but that was a while ago and i'm amazed it's still live.  I am of course talking about experts-exchange's "security".  I don't often frequent experts exchange especially in the last few years since you have to signup/pay.  What happens now is that you can't view the answers without a login which is pretty anoying, you can see where the answers are in the page but they are scrambled.  The hilarious thing is though that if you view the source of the page the answers are there encrypted with ROT 13(yes that's right ROT 13, lol) but they then also appear agin in plain text further down the page(lol^2).  The thing that makes this security so ludicrous is the target market of their site are exactly the kind of people who view the source and can spot their ROT 13 encryption at a glance, it would still be lame but it might be acceptable on a site not specifically aimed at programmers.

    Although on the other hand it does make it convenient as i find sometimes experts-exchange does have the exact answer i'm looking for.  It seems to me that this coding might have been done by some pissed of devs in the last week before they started their new job or something. 



  • It does smell a little of malicious intent. :D



  • It also allows google to know whats on each page.



  • @Lingerance said:

    It also allows google to know whats on each page.

    Along with throngs of non-members, conveniently. ;)



  • I just had a thought, maybe they need RightClick Revenue.



  • @element[0] said:

    The thing that makes this security so ludicrous is the target market of their site are exactly the kind of people who view the source and can spot their ROT 13 encryption at a glance, it would still be lame but it might be acceptable on a site not specifically aimed at programmers.

    Are you sure that the target market of Experts Exchange would recognize ROT13 at a glance? The target market is the kind of programmer that would pay for info that can be found for free from any other forum, newsgroup, or IRC channel.


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