Although I’d love to see it gain wide acceptance, this is a mostly frivolous suggestion for a new HTTP error response code:

455 You are an Ass. Go away.

The code is derived from “l33t speak” where characters are mapped into numbers. 455 should be easy enough to figure out.

Use case: websites are inundated with a wide range of unwanted traffic, including aggressive bots, hackers (especially the script kiddies), brute force password attacks, credential harvesting, and a range of denial of service attacks. Many tools have been developed to combat these attacks, with the normal response to return a 4xx code (often 403 Forbidden) while tossing the request IP into a firewall.

The problem with the existing official codes is that there’s no way for the server to convey a sense of irritation. A 403 could be something more normal, like attempting to access a protected resource without logging in. In this scenario, insulting a regular user would be inappropriate, but we really want to tell the bored idiot trying to read your .env file to go get a life. Hence the need for a 455.

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