Why does this snippet in a blog post make WordPress crash?

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Ok, this is seriously weird and I have no clue what’s going on here. I am using WordPress 3.0.1, I create a new blog post, give it a title, paste the following code into the blog post and hits Save Draft. 

<code lang="php">
// Init curl
$request = curl_init();

// Set request options
curl_setopt_array($request, array
(
    CURLOPT_URL => 'https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr',
    CURLOPT_POST => TRUE,
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => http_build_query(array
        (
            'cmd' => '_notify-synch',
            'tx' => $_GET['tx'],
            'at' => $your_pdt_identity_token,
        )),
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => TRUE,
    CURLOPT_HEADER => FALSE,
    CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => TRUE,
    CURLOPT_CAINFO => 'cacert.pem',
));

// Execute and get the response and status code
$response = curl_exec($request);
$status   = curl_getinfo($request, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);

// Close
curl_close($request);
</code>

Just a code example in my head, but seems like WordPress thinks otherwise, cause when I hit Save Draft, Preview or Publish all I get is a blank page with the following text:

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What in the world is going on here??

Post Views: 1

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1 comment

  1. And of course after I ask the question, I find the solution… Apparently it’s caused by a trigger happy Mod_Security.

    Adding these lines to the .htaccess file makes it go away nicely:

    <IfModule mod_security.c>
  SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI ^/wp-admin/(?:post|async-upload).php$ MODSEC_ENABLE=Off
  SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI ^/xmlrpc.php$ MODSEC_ENABLE=Off
  SecFilterDebugLevel 0
  SecFilterDefaultAction "deny,nolog,noauditlog,status:503"
</IfModule>