Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I think this is supposed to be a April's fools joke.

- github user created in April's 1st (http://github.com/denied)

- contact is an email link to Armin Ronacher (http://github.com/mitsuhiko), who actually published the denied code in github

- code basically just uses jinja2 and werkzeug, which are a template language and a web framework, respectively, which Armin works on

So... yeah.




What it looks like is a virus: http://github.com/denied/denied/blob/master/deny.py

I'm very much not saying that's what it is. Looking at the end it looks like an encoded zip file which the code extracts. Perhaps somebody else will be kind enough to run it and find out what it does. I'd feel too guilty, having told too many people not to do that.


What it looks like is a virus

Because it happens to use a base64-encoded string to obscure some of what it's doing? Yes, there's malware which does that, but this is also such an ancient trick in humorous code obfuscation that it seems silly to jump to the level of paranoia you're displaying (especially given that A) it's by a well-known member of the Python community and B) it was published April 1).


As you agreed, it has visual similarities to a virus. That's all.


It's not a virus, it just unpacks wurkeug, jinja, simplejson, and probably some other stuff. Pretty much it's an epic hack.


The contact email is also

armin.ronacher+dontbelieveanythingontheinternet@active-4.com

So.


My first reflex when I saw this was to think that it's meant as a tongue-in-cheek sidekick on the recent microframework-craze. Still not sure about the intention, but as others have pointed out, yes it's an April's fools.


I should have announced my Bash microframework, martin, yesterday: http://github.com/tlrobinson/wwwoosh/blob/master/martin.sh




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: