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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.
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!"
Well even more to the point IMO: IE isn't "hijacking" NXDOMAIN because IE is the program you're requesting the domain from. Saying IE is hijacking your domain query is a little like claiming the normal pilot of a plane is hijacking it whenever he flies. No, he's not, he's the pilot. It's kind of his job.
What I mean is, if I dropped to the command prompt and typed "nslookup [whatever]", is IE changing the results that I get? If not, then it isn't really fair to say they're "hijacking" anything. If you're typing a domain into your address bar of your browser, and you want something to figure out what you're trying to type and possibly redirecting to a search engine, then the browser is the appropriate place for that to happen. The complaints about DNS "hijacking" is because it's being done by the DNS server and not the browser, but the browser is actually the right place for this to happen.
Now maybe they should offer the option to turn this on or off, but really as long as they're respecting your choice in search engines, I don't think there's a problem. It's a little like complaining that Firefox's Awesome Bar tries to guess what sites you're trying to find.
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.
Because somehow on Windows 7, Firefox is doing the same thing now, and Google is the default search engine.....
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.
Even if you were more right, I'd rather side with him since he can spell.
What was being corrected was ISP for DNS. I don't believe the presence of an apostrophe was the issue the poster was addressing. If you choose to believe a message based on the correctness of punctuation, or even spelling, rather than examining the truth of its (how tempted I was to write it's just to annoy you!) semantic content, you are systematically deluding yourself.
Otherwise well informed people make spelling mistakes. Highly intelligent people make spelling mistakes. People who know how to spell make typos. People who are on the losing side of an argument clutching at straws invest such mistakes with an importance they do not possess.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
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