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I discovered a potential bugI'm having a bizarre problem, which I originally thought was environmental to my computer, but I have now been able to reproduce it two other machines. It's possible it's environmental to my company's network, but I've never seen something like this before. Attempting to enter tags causes [external] Internet connection loss. Yes, I'll repeat that because it sounds insane: "Attempting to enter tags causes the computer to lose Internet connection."

The local network works without an issue, and I can connect to any other machines and use our DFS which are within the LAN, and I can ping the local gateway or any other machine. However, attempting to access any other website / use any web service will fail. The interesting part is that DNS will still resolve IP addresses in a ping request even if you flush your DNS. It appears to only happen if I copy and paste a question I attempted to ask from Notepad into the question box.

Steps to reproduce:

Download this text file from my Google drive which contains my question that I tried to save when I realized I lost the Internet connection: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9k0kTfjwe8Ibk1UY3AtNzBPVnM/view?usp=sharing

  1. Create a new question and write a title. DO NOT ENTER ANY TAGS YET.
  2. Copy the entire contents of the text file
  3. Paste the contents of the text file into the question text area.
  4. Start typing into the tag field.

At step 4 if you experience the same behavior as me you'll see a JSON parsing error in the console and no tags will load, however the loading dots will continue to flash as if it was searching for tags.

Here's a screen shot of the error that shows up in the console: Error in console screenshot

This has been experienced on Windows 7 64-bit Pro, Windows 10 64-bit Pro using both Google Chrome 55 and Mozilla Firefox 50. The antivirus software installed on these machines is the corporate version of AV Defender: Security Manager AV Defender 5.3.32.780 by N-able Technologies. It appear that running ComboFix corrects the issue for the Windows 7 machines, but we're still trying to figure how a fix on the Windows 10 machine.

I was very doubtful that Stack Overflow / Stack Exchange was the problem at first because this sounds insane. I've never had an issue like this before, but I am now able to reproduce the issue in multiple places and following those above steps keeps triggering the problem.

Please be careful testing this issue. It's a PITA to fix.

PS: Anyone know the answer to my question? =)

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Ouch why the downvotes? SO was is the trigger, no other sites caused this problem. – JNYRanger 17 hours ago
2  
sounds like you need to contact your ISP. – Daniel A. White 17 hours ago
1  
or check your antivirus because it could be filtering something. – Daniel A. White 17 hours ago
    
No repro on Win10/ Chrome – rene 17 hours ago
1  
@DanielA.White It's just bizarre because I've never seen something like this and it's no other sites and it's ONLY if you follow those steps does this appear to happen. Our company's 'IT is baffled by it. – JNYRanger 17 hours ago
    
Have you asked your network administrator to take a look? – Stijn 17 hours ago
    
@rene Thanks for the confirmation. It's definitely environmental to our network then. – JNYRanger 17 hours ago
2  
i'd check the AV logs if it is killing the TCP stack. – Daniel A. White 17 hours ago
    
@Stijn Hopefully IT will escalate it to the net admin at this point. – JNYRanger 17 hours ago
6  
As for the downvotes, I find it hard to believe that the cause lies with Stack Overflow, so this question would only serve as a helpdesk for a problem on your company's network. (I'm guessing that's why people downvoted) – Stijn 17 hours ago
    
@Stijn Fair enough. I should have tagged it as support. I'll re-tag – JNYRanger 17 hours ago
8  
@JNYRanger The point is that this isn't an issue about SO. This is just you having a network problem. – Servy 17 hours ago
3  
@JNYRanger The "support" tag is for getting support using SO, not getting support for a problem with a network problem for your LAN, when it has nothing to do with SO... – Servy 16 hours ago
2  
12 Crazy ways to get internet loss with Stack Overflow! Wait until you see what happens when he posts a question on Meta! – Don't Panic 16 hours ago
1  
i know why some sites work and others dont - HTTPS. – Daniel A. White 15 hours ago
up vote 26 down vote

We periodically get reports from folks whose local network has some sort of filter intended to block SQL injection attacks kicking in when they try to ask questions about SQL.

I'd bet that's what's happening here.

The blocking of all other requests is something I haven't seen before; if you do get to the bottom of this, please update us on what exactly was running and what you had to do to calm it down.

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6  
If that software is indeed capable of detecting a SQL injection issues in code you might consider buying it to prevent the many mishaps posted in let's say the PHP tag. Be careful how you integrate this in your network though: Is Stack Overflow down? No, someone posted a crappy SQL question... – rene 16 hours ago
1  
I've yet to see a complaint about being blocked for trying to post an actual injection attack, so... I'm not sure there's much utility there, @rene. – Shog9♦ 16 hours ago

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