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Who cares about the Threat Level?

Posted By Scott Stroz January 7, 2005 11:41 AM Related Categories:
Comments: 5
Views: 2659
Over the past few weeks, I have been tracking traffic to the web page used by my Homeland Security Threat Level Firefox extension. Some of the information is pretty interesting.



Here are some numbers (from 12/20/2004 - 1/7/2005):

  • The page has been hit over 44,000,000 times
  • The page averages over 2.5 million hits per day
  • The page has been hit by users from over 4,000 different domains, over 60 different countries and 270 educational institutions (and this is only the users whose IP could be resolved through DNS, about 20% could not be resolved)

To me, more interesting than the number of domains is what some of those domains are. Keep in mind that the page I am tracking should only be hit by the Firefox extension.

  • Over 50 state and federal government agencies (domain names ending in .gov)
  • Every branch of the US Military.
  • Several dozen banks
  • More than a dozen airlines
  • A dozen Healthcare systems
  • Several news agencies

I have been debating whether it is good policy to post some of the actual domain names. However, there are a few that are too interesting, or too odd, not to mention.

Remember, the mere fact that these registered on this report indicates the use of Firefox

  • dhs.gov (go figure)
  • halliburton.com
  • anheuser-busch.com(I really don't get this one)
  • bloomberg.com
  • house.gov (The House of Representatives)

And the most intriguing entry, by far, is microsoft.com.

Yes, that's correct, someone at microsoft has been using Firefox (and my extension). How funny is that?

5 comments

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osborn.green said...
yes, of course, someone at m$.com uses firebird and this ext.
bill gates uses red hat in the privacy of his own home, but not at work of course
1/11/05 10:58 PM
lupatrian said...
What am I doing wrong: I have installed HSTL several times; the icon never changes from "NOT AVAIL."? I tried installing the Idiocy Level ext - which also links to the HS page - and it does work (I added it just to see if that one would work).

Thanks much
1/13/05 4:32 PM
Scott Stroz said...
Lupatrain - I have had reports of instances where the 'No Avail' icon will appera until the extension refreshes itself. It will refresh after 20 minutes.
1/13/05 4:44 PM
devTekPro said...
yeah, I used to work at the Redmond Campus and despite popular belief there is interest in other things besides WIndows and Internet Explorer - I used to work on making applications compatible with more browsers than just IE - doesn't surprise me at all that you got a hit from microsoft.com ;)
1/14/05 5:01 PM
some wi-fi net dude said...
Well first off I just hate blogs because there are so many reasons so here I am taking the time to post a comment heh, secondly your current poll on who the hottest Disney female character sucks because there is no Tinkerbell option & most importantly I asked why would a homeland security extension even be created for Firefox though I've never tried it, thought on a bit more, maybe you should create a current defcon level extension yeah?
2/21/06 3:35 AM
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