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Reports of IE Hijacking NXDOMAINs, Routing To Bing
Jaeden Stormes writes "We just started getting word of a new browser hijack from our sales force. 'Some site called Bing?' they said. Sure enough, since the patches last night, their IE6 and IE7 installations are now routing all NXDOMAINs to Bing. Try it out — put in something like www.DoNotHijackMe.com." We've had mixed results here confirming this: one report that up-to-date IE8 behaves as described. Others tried installing all offered updates to systems running IE6 and IE7 and got no hijacking.
Update: 08/11 23:24 GMT by KD : Readers are reporting that it's not Bing that comes up for a nonexistent domain, it's the user's default search engine (noting that at least one Microsoft update in the past changed the default to Bing). There may be nothing new here.
Update: 08/11 23:24 GMT by KD : Readers are reporting that it's not Bing that comes up for a nonexistent domain, it's the user's default search engine (noting that at least one Microsoft update in the past changed the default to Bing). There may be nothing new here.
IE cannot "hijack" NXDOMAIN, because it's not an ISP.
I mean really. We can get a page telling us the site doesn't exist, or we can be re-directed to a search engine which can help us find what we were looking for. Yeah it helps pimp Microsoft, but I figure if you are using their browser, it is fair game.
Yet another stupid, linkless, flamebait article.
Come the fuck on guys.
But it becomes a bad thing when you do it for non-existent domains. When you type something without the domain name, its assumed you are searching for something, when you enter a non-existent domain, its sorta like dialing a wrong number. I'd rather the phone system tell me I have a wrong number rather than trying to get me where it thinks I want to go. If I call 555-555-5555 chances are I want 555-555-5555, it should not assume that I want 555-555-XXXX. When I want to go to something .com, .net, .org, or another domain, I want it it to show me the domain, if there is no domain, tell me there is no domain.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
IE 6 has always been doing stuff on auto.search.msn.com if you entered URLs whose domain name didn't exist.
This is not news.
Nothing to see here, move along.
It breaks really shittily configured VPN clients/networks in a BIG way.
WTF is your VPN doing attempting to resolve VPNed hostnames through your default ISP connection, rather than using a nameserver on the VPN? I'd fire your network security guy, before you get bitten in a big way by a DNS "MITM" - I use quotes because it's really Man In The Wrong Place At The Right Time Who Gets Lucky Because Of An Insecure VPN, but that's not quite as catchy.
Take them to kdawson and force him to explain why I can't tag this !story since it is clearly NOT a STORY.
I thought that was the ignorance siren that I heard. Where do I start?
150 million wasted on the latest rebranding of their failed search product. No effect on marketshare
Actually, it stole a percentage point of Google's market share last month. I don't think anybody expected it to gain 70% market share overnight. Except maybe you?
Mass numbers of suspicious posts on Net messageboards all parroting the same talking points: "I'm a long time Google users and I decided to give Bing a try and By Golly! I'm switching!"
Suspicious? Really? I saw somebody the other day on a Macbook Pro using Bing willingly. It's anecdotal evidence. There's nothing suspicious about it. It happens to some people, not everyone. I'm sure there are people who used Live Search before and switched to Google or Yahoo.
Paying floundering Yahoo to use their search engine
I won't argue with the state of Yahoo, but this has the potential to double the usage of Bing, and make it a much more formidable opponent to Google. It was a good deal.
* Putting up fake news story items on Microsoft web pages that are really nothing more than hidden Microsoft search links attempting to inflate the search marketshare
Haven't seen an example of this yet. Provide one and I'll yield this point.
* And now this crap The rate Ballmer is throwing billions at their failed search efforts looks like it may actually outdo Microsoft 8 year long Xbox fiasco for.
Read the first few comments - it goes to your default search provider, which is Google if you set it to. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news for your anti-Microsoft sentiments, but the XBox division is doing pretty well for itself right now. They've made Sony a laughing stock this generation.
"It's a reverse vampire...they....they crave the sun!"
Every time an ISP starts hijacking NXDOMAIN responses, dozens of comments suggesting that this should not be done by the ISP but in the browser get modded +5 and are generally agreed with.
So MS made their browser do it. What is the problem?
(Other than using a monopoly in one market to get one in another.)
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Why? If I mistype a domain name, and get a search results page, I know instantly what happened (I mistyped the domain name), and, odds are, the correct page that I'm looking for is in the search results (usually at the top), one click away, instead of a retype away. This is a net positive for me. Fortunately we can both have it our own way, since you can turn this feature off, right?
Seriously, how many bad articles does this guy have to post before he gets thrown off the slashdot team?
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Indeed. It's also possible that these are people that used to get "Windows Live Search" when they made a mistake and now get "Bing!" instead.
(Windows Live Search no longer exists - "www.live.com" redirects you to "www.bing.com"; so any web-browser installs configured to go for Windows Live will now automatically go to Bing instead.)
That is entirely up to the browser. If the user does not like it, there is an option to turn that off, and there are other browsers which behave differently. NXDOMAIN highjacking is a problem because it is a violation of a standard internet protocol and interferes with other protocols. This is not highjacking. It's a user agent reacting to NXDOMAIN. There is no technical reason why it shouldn't do what it does.
What is WRONG with you people? Why do you real Slashdot stories like this one and instantly come to the conclusion that the story is accurate? Or even remotely true?
Look, maybe this is your first day, so let me clarify it: Every story on Slashdot about Microsoft is at least misleading; most are outright false . Repeat that mantra a few times until it sinks in.
No, this isn't Microsoft "going back to their old ways." This is some moron finally discovering a feature that IE has had since version 6, and possibly before, and going off on some crazy rant with no basis in truth. IE is only redirecting people to Bing because Bing is set to the default search provider!
Please, please, I beg you, DO NOT BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ. In fact, on Slashdot, don't believe *anything* you read unless it's been confirmed elsewhere.
Comment of the year
You are correct. After upgrading to IE8 on one of my virtual test machines, I found that all URLs that do not resolve to a site resulted in a Bing search. I little research into the settings revealed that the this feature was enabled and the default search engine was set to Bing. I added a the Google search engine and set that to my default and issue resolved.
(original poster here) You're right, I'm not as up on the networking side as I am the code side, and I didn't use the correct terminology when I said "hijacking". However, the NXDOMAIN stuff was added by someone else who edited my post before putting it up on the site; I haven't the slightest idea what NXDOMAIN even is. So yes, I'm ignorant in that regard, but not so much so as to throw out terms I don't understand and give a wildly false report.
I wouldn't be so quick to jump on the editor for this. I saw your original post on the Firehose, in which you claimed Microsoft is redirecting 404s -- this would be monstrous and bad, and while "hijack" is a term you can quibble over, your original report was significantly more dire, and objectively false. A 404 is the HTTP response when you ask for a file that's not on the server. In this case, we don't even get as far as asking the server for the non-existent file, because we can't find its IP -- so we get the 404's cousin in DNS, the NXDOMAIN. The editor caught your mistake and corrected it.
Basically, what it's done is force-feed all of our machines Bing as a default search engine (it had been Google). It's one thing if it shipped that way, but this just happened all of a sudden and our sales force (who are not exactly IT-savvy) freaked out and started calling in virus reports when the behavior changed without warning.
Sorry for the confusion. Still, sucks what they did.
If I understand you right, you're saying that your salespeople were used to being directed to Google. So, you guys were already comfortable with this behavior from a technical standpoint, and you're annoyed that it changed from Google to Bing. I'm not an IE user, so I don't know exactly how this behavior worked, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if I were in your position and learned that Microsoft has decided to stop using their browser to promote their competitor in favor of their new product.
From reading the comments here, if you don't want it to use Bing, you can tell your sales guys to set Google as their default browser, because it sounds like that's what it's redirecting to. And as a guy who really dislikes Windows, IE and Microsoft in general, let me say that sounds like a reasonable enough deal.
Here here!
My god, this service has existed since they launched IE6, it is simply turned off by default.
Hit the big "Search" button in the toolbar, and hit customize, and you can change what search provider the address bar search uses. You can disable/enable/change the address bar search option in Internet Options/Advanced.
They obviously recently updated the list of service providers to replace Live search with Bing. My guess is they changed the default address bar search behavior also, and anybody who was using the defaults got changed over.
Nobody seems upset that Chrome does this by default, or that FireFox can do this too. Frickin hypocrites.
Seriously, get ahold of yourselves people, you're really getting upset that IE tries to find the website you were looking for instead of saying "Website not found"? And it's somehow DNS hijacking? Get a grip people!
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
That is since this afternoon when someone clever realized an unregistered domain was about to receive a s;ashdotting. Wonder how much those ads earned him today.