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As I just discovered, cdn.sstatic.net can get flagged as malicious in a firewall. That effectively "breaks" stackoverflow.com, and I suspect other sites in the network (in my case I only experienced the issue on SO).

Because my background is in programming anyway (like most SOpedians), I had the tools / knowledge to troubleshoot (with help =D) and workaround the issue. What about a different site, like photography.stackexchange.com? This issue could be devestating for a user, possibly to the point that they would leave the site entirely.

I know this is not Stack Exchange's fault, but is there anything we can do to mitigate the issue when it happens?

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    You can, in theory, host the files on server in your control and add entry in the Windows "hosts" file to redirect cdn.sstatic.net to that other server. Ugly, temporary, but it should do the trick. :) Commented Jun 9, 2013 at 10:49

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  1. Use unobtrusive JavaScript.
  2. Put a script directly on the main page which confirms the required sub-scripts are loaded (like stub.js). If they didn't, inform the user and inform someone who can help.
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    I thought the latter was already done, though - it used to show an orange bar when the JS couldn't be loaded. Strange. (Informing someone who can help is probably out of the question, though - SE can't provide assistance to every user with a faulty proxy.) Commented Jun 9, 2013 at 9:57
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    Can you expand your answer a little bit more? I am not a web developer and I wouldn't know what to do according to your answer. Commented Jun 9, 2013 at 10:04
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    @juergend it's more a recipe for the developers of the site, not for you as a user who is having the problem... which is why it maybe should be a feature-request rather than a self-answer Commented Jun 9, 2013 at 10:05
  • @Pekka웃 I was thinking more of the case where the cdn is flagged by a common proxy. What would happen if OpenDNS flagged it for example? In that case, the sooner SE was able to get it unflagged, the better. Commented Jun 9, 2013 at 10:07

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