Stealing iFrame destinations currently say, "I'm taking other people's code because I'm a complete hack."
Wordle and IP Regulation: What happens when a hot game is cloned
Here at Ars, we've seen on numerous occasions how straightforward web or potentially portable games can be cloned or completely taken over by rogue designers who expect to cash in on another person's idea. In any case, engineer Josh Simmons was in the unique position of inflicting particularly rude discipline on sites that directly copied and adapted his Sqword web game without consent.
Since its submission last year, Simmons says he's drawn a "consistent collection of daily dynamic clients" for Sqword, which involves sequentially arranging letters into a 5×5 matrix to create as many legitimate words as is reasonable. Still, as verified on Simmons' blog (and seen by 404 Media), searching for Sqword also brings up several "game aggregator" sites that merely implant game fabric from Sqword.com into an iFrame window that's now surrounded by irritating banner ads. .
"That made me angrier than it should have been - not on the basis that Sqword is a treasure - we don't run promotions on the site and we don't make money from it, it's not for any particular reason - but because it was a purpose-built business with partners, something genuine and intentionally allowed to play WITHOUT ads,” Simmons composes. "It's against my ethos as a designer, there are flags and pop-ups everywhere. Assuming I make an app, I agree it should either be free or be straightforward about what the membership or price tag is (and then I couldn't not sell stand the sight of my code modified to that effect."
How goatse.cx went from shock site to webmail administration
Instead of going "all grown up and mindful" in essentially preventing these outside destinations from exploiting his code, Simmons says he inserted a sneak attack into Sqword's code. Currently, assuming a site recognizes that it is stacked in an iFrame, it will display Goats, a many years old shock image that has somehow advanced into email administration. The NSFW image, provided by Sqword, also appears with a self-explanatory message to guests on the aggregator's site: "I'm taking other people's code because I'm a total hack."
As of press time, we've found basically two or three aggregator sites that obviously haven't seen their borrowed pun replaced by quite possibly the grossest image on the web. Many different destinations have evidently noticed the change, essentially moving to implant the (similarly received) Pokémon-themed Sqwordle on sites that were showing the shock image a few days ago.
Simmons includes this case as a wake-up call for gaming criminals, as well as any web designer who has outside substance on their website. "Assuming you're using an iFrame to display a page that's not yours, for real purposes anyway, you have zero power over that substance — it can change at any time," warns Simmons. "One day, as opposed to examining an iFrame, you might be examining a completely unique kind of record."
More than that, though, we think Simmons has opened a whole new front in the never-ending conflict against literary thieves who hope to profit from what others have created. We might dare to dream that this will spark a famous campaign where web game engineers plant troll content bombs in their destinations as usual, turning these aggregator sites into minefields of unexpected disciplines for their corrupt ways.
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