Unable to post on my topic ?

[Anglia105E]

Hello Moderators . . . I am hoping that one of the moderators with expert knowledge can help me with a problem please . . .

As I do almost every day, I am posting some text regarding my work in progress, and this post does include a few photos. When I click on ' Submit Reply ' I am taken to a page that says Model Cars Magazine Forums, and it states ' Oops, that page can't be found ' . Repeated attempts, after checking that nothing is wrong with my post, result in the same error. This has happened previously, around one week ago, and I tried using three different browsers, but the error keeps preventing me from posting.

I am a retired Technical Support Engineer, so I fully understand all things computer related, but this has me baffled. There seems to no reason why this post should not upload as it usually would do . . . Here is the content of my attempted posting, if it will allow me to post it to you. There are five photos attached also. My topic is in W.I.P: Model Cars ' Rolls-Royce No Chemicals, No Paint, No Harmful Glues '

This post failed to upload to you while it contained my block of text, so I have removed the text before posting to you again.

David W.

[iamsuperdan]

Hmm...that's really strange. 

There's defintiely nothing wrong with your thread that I can see. It's not locked, it's never been moved or anything.

Will tag Dave in on these, he's our computer guru.

 

[peteski]

As Dave explained, if there is some text along with the photos, if some verbotten keyword are detected (like the word s e l e c t, or others) you will see that  error.  There is a post in this section of the forum where Dave mentioned some other words which will trigger the error.

[Anglia105E]

Thank you both Dan and Peter . . . I have a feeling that some word or words within my block of text is triggering off the problem.

I am using Microsoft Windows 10 Professional, and Windows Defender Security Centre ( no third party anti-virus or anti-malware )

The browser I am using is Opera, but I also tried Edge and Chrome, which generated the same error message and blocked my posting.

David W.

[peteski]

You can be pretty sure that some word triggered the error.

Actually I wish some forum administrator ( @Dave Ambrose ? ) would post a complete list of the forbidden words in some sticky thread, so we could deal with them. That would make composing our posts much less frustrating. Since the forum software is filtering them out, there has to be a list of them available somewhere.  As we are now, we have to try guessing which is the "bad" word. Even better, instead of the generic "Page cannot be found" error, there should be a page stating that the post was rejected due to a restricted word, and also have the list of words below the error.  That would make sense. Maybe this will be one of the new features which are being planned.

[Anglia105E]

15 minutes ago, peteski said:

You can be pretty sure that some word triggered the error.

Actually I wish some forum administrator ( @Dave Ambrose ? ) would post a complete list of the forbidden words in some sticky thread, so we could deal with them. That would make composing our posts much less frustrating. Since the forum software is filtering them out, there has to be a list of them available somewhere.  As we are now, we have to try guessing which is the "bad" word. Even better, instead of the generic "Page cannot be found" error, there should be a page stating that the post was rejected due to a restricted word, and also have the list of words below the error.  That would make sense. Maybe this will be one of the new features which are being planned.

Good thinking on your part Peter . . . I was just reading through my troublesome block of text, and honestly I cannot see a single word that I could change or modify, and as you say, it would be purely guesswork with trial and error.

David

[bobthehobbyguy]

My suggestion would be to create a document with the text. Divide that text into two parrs and post half and see if it succeeds. If it does the add have of the remaining text and see if that works. It shouldn't be too hard to find the offending text.

[Dave Ambrose]

Well shoot. It means the fix I put in isn't working.

There are rules in place to prevent what's called a SQL injection attack. The verbotten words are s-e-l-e-c-t, u-p-d-a-t-e, and maybe d-e-l-e-t-e, especially followed by w-h-e-r-e. (I feel like I'm trying to slip something past a 4-year old here)

I'll look at this again later this week. 

[bobthehobbyguy]

Sounds to me like this is an issue with the forum software supplier.

Saw this fix on looking at SQL injection

Example (in pseudocode)

Vulnerable (direct string concatenation):

 

username = userInput.Get("username")
password = userInput.Get("password")
query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = '" + username + "' AND password = '" + password + "'"

An attacker could enter ' OR 1=1 -- into the username field to bypass the login. 

Safe (using a parameterized query):

 

username = userInput.Get("username")
password = userInput.Get("password")
query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ? AND password = ?"
ExecuteQuery(query, [username, password])

[Anglia105E]

1 hour ago, bobthehobbyguy said:

My suggestion would be to create a document with the text. Divide that text into two parrs and post half and see if it succeeds. If it does the add have of the remaining text and see if that works. It shouldn't be too hard to find the offending text.

Thanks Bob . . . I already have the text saved in a simple text document, which is something I do as a kind of safety net, particularly when the text that I am posting is quite lengthy . . . My idea was to divide the whole block of text into smaller manageable chunks, and then to post each of the smaller portions until one of them fails spectacularly . . . Your suggestion ties in nicely with my idea. The only downside of course, is that each small chunk on it's own is not really self explanatory for the readability of the topic, but then I only have to do this once in order to fix the problem (hopefully).

David

[Dave Ambrose]

54 minutes ago, bobthehobbyguy said:

Sounds to me like this is an issue with the forum software supplier.

Saw this fix on looking at SQL injection

The problem is actually in a rules engine that front-ends the web server. The forum software guards against those attacks just fine. 

[Anglia105E]

Well guys . . . Admins and moderators and those members who have kindly offered their suggestions and advice, I am pleased to report that I have just posted five chunks of text that divided up from the main block of text. Not one of those five chunks of text generated the error message that I was getting previously, and they all posted normally . . . Just to be sure, I also posted the same five photos that were part of the larger text block. That also posted normally, with no error message.

This does not make sense, mind you. The logic of this is lost on me. Why does the whole block of text fail to post, but the five individual portions of this text posted normally, without error, suggesting there is nothing contained within that text to cause a problem ?

Thanks very much guys !

David Watson