What’s the purpose of cloning a website like this? Is the idea to add links to other sites that get ranked marginally higher if the fake site gets popular? Because even if you cloned 1000 websites, I can’t imagine it making a big difference.
Pure speculation, this could be part of a North Korean job seeking program where they masquerade as the original blogger. They can use the copied site as proof they're a real person. Or it's part of a long-con social engineering project.
They could put out a legit-looking blog post that has a malicious GitHub command that installs malware, and social engineer someone into running it.
> It's hosted with Cloudflare, and the abuse reporting form they insist you use straight-up doesn't work. Click "Submit an abuse report" and it'll take you to a completely blank page. Very encouraging.
The page is truly blank = the view source page shows absolutely nothing
So I turned of uBlock origin and tried again
> Sorry, you have been blocked
> You are unable to access abuse.cloudflare.com
Corporate abuse processes are designed to ensure your complaint never reaches a person. You can reach a person by suing them, but you won't, and they know you won't.
What’s the purpose of cloning a website like this? Is the idea to add links to other sites that get ranked marginally higher if the fake site gets popular? Because even if you cloned 1000 websites, I can’t imagine it making a big difference.
Pure speculation, this could be part of a North Korean job seeking program where they masquerade as the original blogger. They can use the copied site as proof they're a real person. Or it's part of a long-con social engineering project.
They could put out a legit-looking blog post that has a malicious GitHub command that installs malware, and social engineer someone into running it.
The CEO (or ex-CEO?) of Cloudflare is an HN native. He should be able to help.
[dead]
> It should be obvious this isn't a high-value website.
Ah, but every time I've seen your blog, it was on the front page of Hacker News!
Are you sure it was the original, or a clone?
Agreed. 100% of the times I've seen your blog it was on the front page!
....sample size one.
You couldn't make this up.
> It's hosted with Cloudflare, and the abuse reporting form they insist you use straight-up doesn't work. Click "Submit an abuse report" and it'll take you to a completely blank page. Very encouraging.
The page is truly blank = the view source page shows absolutely nothing
So I turned of uBlock origin and tried again
> Sorry, you have been blocked > You are unable to access abuse.cloudflare.com
.. you've been blocked. That's not what the page shows (a form.. like the article says). After submit there's no "message received" type page.
Corporate abuse processes are designed to ensure your complaint never reaches a person. You can reach a person by suing them, but you won't, and they know you won't.