Arch Linux

lhy7889678

Member

Registered: 2024-07-22

Posts: 7

Arch Wiki is verifying my browser permanently

Today, when attempting to view Arch Wiki, I get the following:

Verifying your browser, plese wait! ? ?

However, it seems that Arch Wiki is verifying my browser permanently. No progress bar, no captcha, just a line of text and infinite refresh with 303 See Other.

Both my laptop and my smartphone, and both Firefox and Chrome are experiencing this.

This message only shows up when using an IP address from China. I have tried three network vendors, China Telecom, China Unicom and CMCC, and they all fail. Using a VPN will load Arch Wiki normally.

Other websites of Arch Linux are not affected.

Is this a bug?

(Edit: the question marks are emojis U+1F793 and U+1F431. It seems that Arch Forum is not really good at rendering characters with 5-hex-digit codepoints...)

Last edited by lhy7889678 (2024-07-22 05:40:43)

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 59,718

Re: Arch Wiki is verifying my browser permanently

Yes, wide codepoints are filtered by the bbs (I guess the idea was to prevent homoglyph attacks?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_303 - what URL are you actually trying to open?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/ should 301 to  https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page

curl -v 'https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page' > /dev/null

Is this a bug?

Sure…

This message only shows up when using an IP address from China.

There's probably some sort of geoblocking going on, either by the service  or Hetzner (arch was DOSed over the WE) or some yellow teddybear (with a very tiny tail)

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lhy7889678

Member

Registered: 2024-07-22

Posts: 7

Re: Arch Wiki is verifying my browser permanently

Hmm, the bug seems to be fixed now.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/ is now firstly 303 to https://wiki.archlinux.org/challenge#/ ("Verifying your browser") and then shortly 301 to https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Main_page

Previously, after 303 to https://wiki.archlinux.org/challenge#/ it was stuck there, 303 -> auto refresh -> still 303 -> refresh again, infinitely...

gromit

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Germany

Registered: 2024-02-10

Posts: 781

Website

Re: Arch Wiki is verifying my browser permanently

Yeah the challenge mechanism was broken it seems Also see https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/ … quests/851 for the change request

lhy7889678

Member

Registered: 2024-07-22

Posts: 7

Re: Arch Wiki is verifying my browser permanently

I wonder if the challenge mechanism will cause trouble to search engines in China (e.g. Baidu)...

(Actually, Baidu becomes a really infamous search engine after 2010s and Arch Linux users are very unlikely to use it. However, due to inertia effect, it is still widely used in China. On the other hand, Arch Wiki is a comprehensive encyclopedia of the Linux world, not exclusive to Arch Linux. If Arch Wiki is inaccessible to Baidu, then I guess lots of Linux newbies will have to refer to the CSDN craps...)

(CSDN is a blog platform infamous for inaccuracy, plagiarism, unequal competition for SEO, paywall (even for famous FOSS projects!)...)