User-Agent Used to Confirm Pingbacks Should not be Blank

[macmanx]

[[Note: While this problem has been caused by a plugin, I do believe that it is a WordPress issue.]]

Currently, WordPress seems to confirm pingbacks using a blank user-agent. This is a common technique used by spammers to avoid spam filters, and as such, it is now blocked by Michael Hampton's "Bad Behavior" v1.2.2. Any attempt to send a pingback while using Bad Behavior v1.2.2 will fail, because the confirmation request from the pinged blog will be blocked for having no user-agent. While this problem has been caused by a plugin, I do believe that it is a WordPress issue. WordPress should not be using common spamming techniques. And, after all, why not identify WordPress' confirmation requests with a user-agent like "WordPress"?

Michael Hampton's "Bad Behavior" can be found here: ​http://www.ioerror.us/software/bad-behavior/

[error]

The root cause of the problem is that there's a lot of duplicate code in WP as regards making outbound HTTP connections. Instead of just adding a user-agent here, I would suggest actually cleaning house and getting rid of all the duplicate code.

[markjaquith]

Yeah, we need to consolidate everything into one function, which makes judgements about what methods are supported on the server, and then behaves similarly in terms of user agent whichever method chosen.

[error]

patch wp-includes/functions.php fixes this issue

[error]

I dropped in a quick patch which puts a user-agent string in the outbound connections; it'll get you up and running for now, but long-term a lot of this duplicate code really should be consolidated.

[ryan]

(In [2933]) Send User-Agent when confirming pingbacks. Props error. fixes #1713

[(none)]

Milestone 2.0 deleted