Microsoft Yanks Security Site Poisoned With Porn

CWmike writes "Microsoft disabled the search tool on its Safety & Security Center on Saturday after attackers poisoned results with links to pornographic URLs. The company restored the website's search field early Monday afternoon ET. Alex Eckelberry, the general manager of GFI Software's security group and CEO of Sunbelt Software, said search poisoning is not unusual — but this is different. 'This is crafty,' Eckelberry said. 'This isn't normal search poisoning. It's poisoning the results with actual searches. Users were getting back a prior search as a search result.'"

Comments

Feature

[Sonny Yatsen]

That's not poisoning the results. That's a feature.

Re:Feature

[Kamiza Ikioi]

It actually is a feature. FTA: "On Friday, Alex Eckelberry, the general manager of GFI Software's security group and the CEO of Sunbelt Software, said that searches using terms like "sex," "porn," "girl" and "streaming" on the Microsoft site were returning links to pornographic websites at or near the top of the results list."

Well, Gee-flipping-whiz! A search tool brought up porn when someone searched for... porn! Crazy! Call me simple, but it sounds to me that some engineer did his job in delivering relevant search results, poison or not. If you search for sex and porn, odds are that those "poison" results are probably the more relevant results. I understand this is a security site, but either that means you limit it to a list of sites, or you expect open search to, well, search openly.

This is why Bing has to copy Google results. If it didn't, they'd be going nuts over why searches for porn lead to pornography. This way, they still don't know, but they know the internets is happy with Google's strange and mysterious search code that causes pornography to show up on occasion.

As for the poison, its obvious. This wouldn't work on Google because it would take millions of searchers to do this particular technique. I doubt many people actually use this tiny little engine, and a few dedicated people with hours to waste probably thought using it would get around a corporate firewall blocking porn links from Google or something like that. I must say, though, that's a LOT of fapping for this to add up to a poison.

Re:Poisoned?

[tekgoblin]

1 Vote for better

Security site?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it safe sex, at least?

Yank and porn in the title

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Well done.

Re:Yank and porn in the title

[VortexCortex]

Alternate Title:
Microsoft Security Site Poisoned With Porn; Jerked offline.

Re:Poisoned?

[jhoegl]

Depends on the porn. I dont really wanna see grandma in her panties. Do you?

Re:Bad Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Not hacked, poisoned. The search engine's features have been manipulated in such a way to produce the results. Clever, but no hacking took place.

An income opportunity for MS.

[crovira]

This is a new feature created by Balmer (who's all for looking at porn, [have you seen him dance, sweat-stained armpits and all? I feel dirty just thinking of him going around shouting "Developers",]) and his lawyers (who are going to go after the ofender's website in an effort to collect advertising fees.)

Re:An income opportunity for MS.

[Hsien-Ko]

When he called for "developers developers developers" he obviously meant those wombs and we clearly see that's the intent here

Stupid is an infinite resource

[interkin3tic]

searches using terms like "sex," "porn," "girl" and "streaming" on the Microsoft [Safety & Security Center] site were returning links to pornographic websites at or near the top of the results list

1. Put links to your porn site in MS' safety and security center search bar
2.Wait for people to search for porn in the safety and security center search bar
3.???
4. PROFIT!!!

I want to believe that this is just some automated process that searches the web for search bars and then tries to put in their own porn links. Alternatively, I want to believe that this is just a few porn marketers who are so dumb, they put links to their porn sites in a search field for MS safety and security. But I can't convince myself.

It's depressing to realize that there are actually people dumb enough to go to an antivirus website and start searching for porn.

"Dang! I musta gotten a virus! Don't know how, all I've been doing with this here computer is lookin up pictures of nekkid ladies. Well, better look for something to fix this from microsoft.... boring boring boring, I wanna see nekkid ladies! OOH! PORN!!"

Re:Stupid is an infinite resource

[Anonymous Coward]

Never underestimate the number of ways people search for pr0n. At our large search engine site, we hear from people who maintain the help center site that pr0n terms predominate the search log.

Re:Stupid is an infinite resource

[blair1q]

You'd think a search engine attuned to a particular data set would not allow itself to prioritize results outside that data set.

But then, Microsoft is a company based on selling shit as shinola, so putting a "security search" facade on a basic web search tool should be a no-brainer for them.

Re:Poisoned?

[Mister Whirly]

Your grandma or my grandma? Because your grandma is kind of hot.

Huh?

[biodata]

I'm probably being stupid but if someone puts in a search like 'sex girl porn streaming' in some kind of search engine, how is it bad when the site returns pron links?

Re:Huh?

[treeves]

As a for instance, it would be bad if you searched for porn on Saturday, then on Monday at work, when you search for stainless steel widgets, you get search results full of porn links.

Re:Poisoned?

[wisnoskij]

I guess the question is then why did you search for her in the first place?

"Users were getting back a prior search as a search result"

Re:LOL

[hairyfeet]

Actually if it is like there MSE it is since....well never since they bought out Giant which made a decent antimalware package and just rebranded it. I actually thought that was a smart idea, as simply throwing more money at a problem rarely if ever works so it is better just to hire someone who knows how to do what you need done.

Of course the danger to that theory is the Symantec "OMFG how much shit they gonna pile on this thing?" school of jamming everything you buy into a giant "suite' of poorly related crap, but from what I've seen MSE is pretty much just antimalware and that's it. Meh I think Avast Free is better anyway.

As for TFA search results got poisoned, big whoop. With the Anons and LULSec types running amok I'm sure this happens hundred of times a day and it would have even made idle if it was Bob's insurance company or John's house o' security, but in this case it was MSFT who probably farmed it out and got bit by badly coded website design. Surprise surprise.

Considering that since the sweaty monkey took over they have been flinging poo at the wall in the hopes something sticks (Zune,Kin, no real mobile strategy) and hitting themselves in the face more often than not (killing the market they had built up with PlaysForSure with the lame ZunePass) fuckups like this frankly should not be a surprise to anyone. The only real hits they've had since Ballmer is the X360 which they got lucky in that the PS3 screwed their price point with Cell and Blu Ray, not to mention having Halo and Gears to sell the x360 to fratboys, and Win 7 which from what I understand was done by the office guys without Ballmer meddling after the grand suckfest that was Vista.

Re:this is not clear!

[MichaelSmith]

Wasnt't there an article recently about the bing search database being built by internet explorer capturing the input and output of google searches? Knowing that a person could do a lot of damage...

Should read . . .

[lastx33]

Yanks withdraw porn site poisoned by Microsoft.