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I hope this is the right place for this. I think I know why my question was closed, but I just want someone to explain why, specific to my question, not just the automated reason.

My question was closed because it was not a real question, and I think that's because I phrased it ambiguously at the start, and kind of asked several questions without restating the thing I really wanted answered. All I really want is for one of the people who voted to close the question to agree with me on this part but I can't PM and I would comment on the question, but it has already been answered in the comments, and it seems wrong to keep commenting on a question when a problem is solved.

My question is here and I have edited it since the original: "Black Hole Exploit".

You can see the original in the edits, one thing that might have gotten it closed is this:

Also if anyone has any experience with something like this then please share. Though I know I should probably keep the question related to the code.

And also perhaps the edit about paypal, since that was making the question more unclear. And also I didn't ask the question in the title, could that be why?

Why was my previous question closed?

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1 Answer 1

up vote 7 down vote accepted

The question was closed because it doesn't contain a question: It simply states some facts, but it doesn't explicitly ask anything. You could be asking how to avoid the site gets exploited, how to verify the site has been really exploited, but you are not explicitly asking that.
The question is also too generic; it doesn't give any detail to answer an eventual question because it doesn't report (through the tags, or in the body of the question) which programming language, framework, or server you are using for the web site.

If you just want to know what the JavaScript code does, then you just need to run it. Nobody is able to know what that code is doing reading it, because the code is not readable.
Keep in mind that questions that sound like "do my work for me" are probably down-voted, in the same way the "please give me the code" questions are.

The part I edited out, after the question was already closed, is the following one:

EDIT: People seem to dislike this question but I'm not sure why, could someone tell me? I would just like to know what the code does and I don't understand why people dislike that, there are similar questions on here. Thanks to the person that linked to zscaler research.

That part just contains a question about why the question was down-voted; it essentially is a question about the question, which is metadata. What I reported in this answer is still valid.

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Thanks for the help. Also, as my question was one edit ago was that better? I notice you changed it so now it doesn't have an explicit question, why is that better? –  Paul Oct 1 '11 at 14:32
But I say "I would just like to know what the code does" and I don't explicitly state that anywhere else, but since that's what I wanted to know I thought it was necessary to be there. I understand why the rest was removed. –  Paul Oct 1 '11 at 14:46
You say nobody can know what the code does, but somebody (Fabio) deobfuscated it to show exactly what it does. I'm not too familiar with javascript so I asked someone to help and I think that was a valid request. –  Paul Oct 1 '11 at 15:37
@Paul Your whole question is "I have a website I run for a relation and their AVG came up saying "EXPLOIT BLACK HOLE EXPLOIT" or something like that. This seems to happen when the website is infected, and I think it is infected. I found this line of code on all the pages, and I didn't put it there: pastebin.com/sJXgw8LX (yes that is all one line)." That would have been sort of OK if you'd added a blank line then "What does that code do?", but better if you'd added the exploit code right into the post properly formatted using Ctrl+K or the code button {}. –  agf Oct 1 '11 at 16:57
Thanks for the advice agf. –  Paul Oct 1 '11 at 17:00
@kiamlaluno, I didn't mean my question to come out as a "do my work for me" question. If I had posted a standard piece of JS and asked someone to tell me what it did, I would agree it wasn't a good question. I think, however, that because the code was so obfuscated it isn't simply a "do my work for me" question and I'd hope people would realise that. –  Paul Oct 1 '11 at 17:09
@Paul I am sure you didn't mean the question to come out as "do my work for me," but it's probably how other users have read the question, as there isn't anybody who is able to read that code without to de-obfuscate it with an utility. The "do my work for me" part becomes then "find a way to de-obfuscate the code for me, and explain the code to me" (where the last part was not made explicit in the first revision of the question). –  kiamlaluno Oct 1 '11 at 17:22
I suppose that is true. I thought perhaps someone had seen something similar and might be able to at least give a good estimate, if not the exact code. I also find that questions like this: stackoverflow.com/questions/1414861/… aren't closed or down-voted, even though it seems the author has put in less effort than me. Is there a reason that question is better than mine? (I didn't go looking for a specifically bad one either, this was just on the side bar when I was viewing my question). Thanks for still responding to me. –  Paul Oct 1 '11 at 17:32
@Paul The difference with that question is that it was clear since the first revision what the OP was asking for: "I want a bash script to read all files recursively in a directory and remove some code (i.e a iframe virus) from it and save back the orignal file." Consider that the question was asked on 2009, and at that time users were less "aggressive" about voting to close. I am sure that bad quality questions were not a problem then as they are now, considering that only recently the down-votes on questions have no effect on who down-votes. –  kiamlaluno Oct 1 '11 at 17:38
I didn't know things had changed since then. I'll try be more direct next with my questions next time. Thanks for taking the time to respond to me. –  Paul Oct 1 '11 at 17:42

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