+1; getting their 500 page with some info that looks like it's base64 encoded, but it doesn't decode to anything useful running it through `echo -n '[...]' |base64 -d` . Any ideas what format that is?
I'm going with everybody else, it's an encrypted stack trace. Every reload is entirely different rather than small portions changing, so we can assume it's something like AES rather than a simple XOR. If it were a simpler encoding we would see largely similar areas with just small sections changed for server IDs and timestamps. The distribution of the data is for all intents random, and it's too big to be an identifier on it's own, so that's the only logical explanation I can come up with.
It looks like it's a url-safe base64 encoding of an encrypted blob (perhaps a stack trace). They're using '-', and '_' instead of '/' and '+'. Replace these characters and base64 will succeed, leaving with ~3k bytes randomly distributed between 0x00 and 0xFF.
Interesting. If this is the case, then there must be a good reason not to stop rendering that. I am also curious if each server has its own private key or not. Anyhow, thanks for the info.
the decoded data has a frequency distribution similar to random output so probably encrypted :) maybe that did something lolzy like stream cipher with the same key.
Seems to me like their DB is not reachable from all their webservers..
Or perhaps they did push a fix that has not reached all fo their webservers yet.
EDIT: now (few minutes later)it loads just fine, seems the fix had to be pushed to all servers and thats why it sometimes loads and sometimes it doesn`t
Perhaps they're working on some changes to the much-despised commenting system. Either way, this is an interesting development.... one that will have interesting outcomes at the least.
I'll be disappointed if this is just a normal service outage.