On Kottu’s Security
Ok, er, wow. Now Nibras Bawa is sending out mails threatening to hack Kottu. Is it possible to break Kottu? Yes, I do it all the time. However, it’s simply impossible to destroy peoples content as Bawa claims. Kottu is an aggregator. It doesn’t host any content at all. I’ve completely crashed Kottu and been able to reconstitute it in 10 minutes. It’s basically WordPress plus a few plugins and a blogroll. The beauty of an aggregator is that all the content is on a hundred other sites and the aggregator can be rebuilt anywhere.
I think Bawa is just trying to spread fear, so my recommendation is to just ignore him. Don’t correspond with him over email, when I get to a certain point with trolls I just set up a GMail filter to send their mails directly to trash.
Is Kottu in danger? I dunno, don’t think so, as judging by his mail he doesn’t even seem to understand what it is. Even if he did knock over Kottu it wouldn’t remove any of the posts (which are on other sites). I can just reboot the server and start over.
So basically, even if he can somehow figure out and attack Kottu, it still won’t delete any of the posts he’s worried about. None of those are centrally hosted. Also, Kottu is pretty well secured by now.
So, don’t worry, and feel free to delete any further mails from this character. I seriously recommend cutting off contact with him or forwarding the mails to me. He’s basically threatening ‘violence’ and attacks now. Per Kottu, that site is A) secured B) easily rebuilt and C) not the actual host of any content.
Though I find it distasteful, I have no ‘official’ position on the insults and hurt feelings going around. My only concern is that peoples privacy is being violated. In one of his ultimatums Bawa mentioned that he’d go back to the global blogosphere and leave this scene alone. I hope he does.
How are you managing with the massive amount of sites on Kottu? Has scalability become a problem, or have you tweaked the plugin to manage?
Jeez, what a lowlife! To think that this same guy is actually a fairly popular personality….:(
where? I’ve never heard of him before
Speaking of Kottu, It’s been a while since you had a kottu meetup right? What do you think about the idea of having one at Barefoot?
[...] seems we’ve been doing that again, and this time I’ve been at the back of the line not getting any of the action; a fine tag [...]
Ohh… poor guy Nibras Bawa show up again! :D
Anyway, after reading his blog posts, I feel that he’s a noob. I don’t want to laugh at others’ inability, but, this guy want’s nothing but to show up.
Dear bloggers, don’t be afraid. Hacking Kottu is not easy as Nibras claims. Indi can do it because he knows how it is organized. But for others it can take some considerable amount of time. No need to be afraid at all — I mean hacking Kottu doesn’t affect the original content as Indi said.
Nibras is not the first person who wanted to hack into another person’s blog. Many people may have tried to hack WordPress. Then, would WordPress developers wait till that? WordPress is pretty secure now.
hey who removed jarabaraas bawa from kottu? dude he was so much fun. please please can we have him back?
oh and while you’re at it, put me back on kottu as well! feed me some kottu!
[...] you removed Jarabaraas from Kottu? Padashow said some pretty nasty things to you but you didn’t kick him out of the [...]