Top all-time · #1657
A Computer Scientist in a Business School
Personal blog · behind-the-enemy-lines.combusinessdatacareer
A Computer Scientist in a Business School is a personal blog at behind-the-enemy-lines.com about business, data and career. Since 2011, 43 different Hacker News readers have linked it 65 times, most often “How I attacked myself using Google and I ramped up a $1000 bandwidth bill”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (21) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Panos Ipeirotis's blog on cloud cost and abuse incidents, ad fraud, and Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing research. HN readers cite it for accounts of Google and AWS DoS-style bills and for crowdsourcing work.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Called an interesting post on how misconfigured Google Docs and S3 links caused an accidental DoS; told readers to read the follow-up and a feedback article; ur
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 21 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Random thoughts of a computer scientist who is working behind the enemy lines; and lately turned into a double agent.
Most-linked posts?
- How I attacked myself using Google and I ramped up a $1000 bandwidth bill10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2012-04-25
- Uncovering an advertising fraud scheme. Or "the Internet is for porn"4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-04-05
- Fighting Fire with Fire: Scalable Oral Exams3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-12-29
- The Google attack: How I attacked myself using Google Spreadsheets3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-03-11
- The Google attack: How I attacked myself using Google Spreadsheets 2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-04-28
- 50% of the online ads are never seen2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-03-14
- Are you a Bayesian or Frequentist? (2008)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-08-31
- /2010/03/new-demographics-of-mechanical-turk.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-08-23
- How big is Amazon's Mechanical Turk?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-11-18
What Hacker News says?
Or DDoSing http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/04/google-attack-...
Comment linking /2012/04/google-attack-how-i-self-attacked.html?m=1
on “Making a virtual machine in Google Sheets”Submitted How I attacked myself using Google and I ramped up a $1000 bandwidth bill as a story · 775 points
HN discussionPossibly related: http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2011/03/uncovering-adv...
Comment linking /2011/03/uncovering-advertising-fraud-scheme.html
on “Google Will Eat Itself”Submitted Uncovering an advertising fraud scheme (NSFW) (2011) as a story · 268 points
HN discussionThere was a case awhile back where Google docs helped a guy rack up a huge AWS bill. http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/04/google-attack-...
Comment linking /2012/04/google-attack-how-i-self-attacked.html
on “Dropbox opening my docs?”Submitted How I attacked myself with Google Spreadsheets (2012) as a story · 168 points
HN discussionIf you have to watch the video for 15-30 minutes, I think it's not the persuasion aspect but probably loading different sites in an iframe to defraud advertisers: http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2011/03/uncovering-adv...
Comment linking /2011/03/uncovering-advertising-fraud-scheme.html
on “How 'One Weird Trick' Conquered The Internet”Submitted Philippines: The country that never sleeps as a story · 53 points
HN discussionBe sure to also read the follow up for the actual solution that Ad-safe implemented here: http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/03/50-of-ads-are-...
Comment linking /2012/03/50-of-ads-are-never-seen.html
on “Uncovering an advertising fraud scheme (NSFW) (2011)”Submitted Mechanical Turk vs oDesk as a story · 51 points
HN discussionsomeone already did it, and to himself :D http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/04/google-attack-...
Comment linking /2012/04/google-attack-how-i-self-attacked.html
on “Monitor your Website’s Uptime with Google Docs”Submitted Does lack of reputation help the crowdsourcing industry? as a story · 26 points
HN discussionhttp://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/04/google-attack-... Interesting post which showed how badly configured linkages between private google docs and S3 caused an accidental DoS.
Comment linking /2012/04/google-attack-how-i-self-attacked.html
on “What should every programmer know about security?”Submitted Uncovering an advertising fraud scheme. Or "the Internet is for porn" as a story · 18 points
HN discussionHave a read of this article: http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/04/feedback-unemp... There's good reasons to believe that the portfolio that designers develop through 99designs is likely to be worth far more to them than the win itself.
Comment linking /2012/04/feedback-unemployment-and-crowdsourcing.html
on “Stack Overflow's Original 99designs Logo Contest”Submitted I used ChatGPT to sue a Norwegian airline from New York and get $4760 as a story · 12 points
HN discussionhttp://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/04/google-attack-... Discussion of the above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3890328
Comment linking /2012/04/google-attack-how-i-self-attacked.html
on “The day I was DoSed by Google”Submitted The Need for Standardization in Crowdsourcing as a story · 12 points
HN discussion... and has had security incidents http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/04/google-attack-...
Comment linking /2012/04/google-attack-how-i-self-attacked.html
on “How to automate Google related tasks”Submitted 50% of the online ads are never seen as a story · 9 points
HN discussionI'm glad someone else is calling this for what it is: a way to get around minimum wage. Another solution would be to use worker reputation (something explored by Panos Ipeirotis @ http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/ ) Because MT workers are unreliable, you often need to have several doing the same task. Better workers require fewer checks, and are therefore much more cost effective. Right now MT is a market for l…
Comment linking /
on “Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor”Submitted Crowdsourcing and the end of job interviews as a story · 7 points
HN discussion> What kind of AWS setup leads to surprise bills? You only need a single configuration wrong to get bankrupt overnight, and AWS has so many knobs that make a switchboard look like a toy. I remember things like [1]. It’s very easy for something you don’t control go rogue, and AWS offers no protection for such scenarios. 1: https://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/04/google-attack...
Comment linking /2012/04/google-attack-how-i-self-attacked.html
on “Escaping surprise bills and over-engineered messes: Why I left AWS”Submitted Are you a Bayesian or Frequentist? (2008) as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThere are some crazy clever schemes out there for click fraud. Check out this link - _WARNING NFSW IMAGES_ http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2011/03/uncovering-adv... This was estimated to be making $500K a month before being found... and was a work of pure genius.
Comment linking /2011/03/uncovering-advertising-fraud-scheme.html
on “Discovered: Botnet Costing Display Advertisers over $6,000,000 per Month”Submitted Why Mechanical Turk Allows Only US-Based Requesters as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis is about two years old: http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/04/google-attack-... I would hope that Google is able to detect abuse of their infrastructure for (D)DOS.
Comment linking /2012/04/google-attack-how-i-self-attacked.html
on “A method to use Google for DDoS. Bug or Not? ”Submitted The (Unofficial) NIST Definition of Cloud Labor and Crowdsourcing as a story · 5 points
HN discussionHumans being the error-prone creatures we are, I wonder how it could work better to a longer word-based code, but allow for certain kinds of errors: for example, 1) word order doesn't matter, 2) it tries to correct a word not in the built-in word list to the "closest" word in it, 3) maybe you only need, say, seven of the eight words to be right to get in (then it might remind you of the real code). You can do a litt…
Comment linking /2010/03/new-demographics-of-mechanical-turk.html)--folks
on “Towards Reliable Storage of 56-bit Secrets in Human Memory [pdf]”Submitted Fighting Fire with Fire: Scalable Oral Exams as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
