Re: lynx-dev "Alert!: HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request"

[David Woolley]

> 
>   Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.  
>   Client sent malformed Host header  

I don't really have much sympathy with this problem as the URL is 
deliberately designed to mislead filtering software; it is a typical
spammer's trick.

However, I think one can reasonably assume that Lynx is sending everything
between // and the first single / to one of:

- the user's proxy;
- the microsoft server;
- the offender's server at 212.254.206.213.

My guess would be the user's proxy, as it seems unlikely that Lynx would
successfully parse out the legitimate host name and then send the whole
lot - similarly for the bogus host name.

It's possible that the person who is getting failed to connect is not
using a proxy and getting a DNS error as a result of looking up the
whole field.

>   Security warning: you are about to go to an address
>   that contained a username before the servername:

That's a good description of the real problem.   I would say that
you should almost certainly abandon any URL that produces this warning
as it is almost certainly  malicious.


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