what a difference a slash makes

[lucy24]

Today's entry in the "Been there, done that" category.

.htaccess reflecting entire deletion of /paintings/paintings and /paintings/blowups directories

RewriteRule ^paintings/(blowups|paintings) - [G]

random log entry from Redirects bin

aa.bb.cc.dd - - [01/Apr/2012:10:48:17 -0700] "GET /paintings/paintingstyles.css HTTP/1.1" 410 977 "http://www.example.com/paintings/refrats/strawberryblonde.html"

Oops.

This is the only top-level directory that doesn't partake of the shared stylesheet. Its own styles or nothing.

And it only took me three days to notice.

[coopster]

Slasher!
There's another one almost as bad ... the multi-slash! Configure one loop wrong in your application logic and you come up with valid url(s):

http://www.example.com/cgi-program/script/myfile 
http://www.example.com/cgi-program/script//myfile 
http://www.example.com/cgi-program/script///myfile

Ugly.

[lucy24]

Postscript:

... and now let's talk about how long it took me to figure out why this perfectly harmless Australian got a 403 slammed in their face, not just once but four times.

58.111.nn.nn - - [17/Mar/2012:00:18:53 -0700] "GET /pictures/subdirectory/tracker.gif HTTP/1.1" 403 1044 "http://www.example.com/pagename.xtn" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; Trident/6.0)"

Oops.