phpBB Banned at MSN Search ?

[dcz]

hello,

I have been observing the past few days that any search query including "phpbb" on MSN Search just outputs a nice blank page (FF and IE).
And it is the same with MSN France, so it really seem to be something concerning their main database.

I mailed them, with no answers so far, and I am wondering if you experience the same results.

Is phpBB Banned From MSN Search ?

This seems to concern all queries including "phpbb", and "special" search commands such as site:www.phpbb.com.

And it's the same if "phpbb" is part of a bigger word.

Very odd, unless the word "phpbb" was banned from their database, which would be hard to understand, this could come from a bug.

Are there too many results for MSN while searching for "phpbb" ?

I just hope to be wrong in both cases

Because phpbb.com is still findable with MSN.

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[Peter77]

I know that at one point even Google 'banned' the keyword phpbb from thier search engine. but that was because of a known vulnerability in phpbb at the time... or so I read.

Seems like MSN search has blocked "phpbb" over at my end too. maybe they are trying to prevent scrpit kiddies from doing mass searches. if I type in "phpbc" it will come out with "Were you looking for phpbb" but of course I get that blank white page after clicking.

[dcz]

All right so it is confirmed from France too. Same effects.

I had also though about some securing policy, but, as a matter of fact, this would be useless if it was only MSN Search to do it.

What a bout Google and Yahoo then, they both will still return results when searching for "phpbb".

And MSN is not the most used Search Engine ...

Unless maybe if the hack concerns phpBB running under IIS but ...

Actually they could output more than a blank page in all cases I think

[dcz]

it's now possible again

I knew msn was going to love this site

Anyway, all msn servers seems to accept phpbb as a search query now

[Peter77]

Sweet glad they allowed it... hey congrats, dcz... your sites are on the first page. I saw one of my MOD requets I made a while back got indexed too. hehe

[dcz]

it's msn.fr though, but yes that's pretty good, you'll see msn will love you forum as well

[dcz]

And again :

While submiting my SEO report, I went through something like 3 or 4 consecutive Search queries at msn.com to find out how many pages where indexed to fill up my reports. And from now on I only get this :

We are seeing an increased volume of traffic by some malware software. In order to protect our customers from damage from that malware, we are blocking your query. A few legitimate queries may get flagged, and for that we apologize. Please be assured that we are hard at work on this problem and hope to get it resolved even better as soon as possible.
If you are using phpBB, please check out the phpBB downloads site http://www.phpbb.com/downloads.php and make sure you are not vulnerable.
- MSN Search Team

while performing : http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=si ... bb-seo.com

same with : http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=si ... &FORM=QBRE

But other works :

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=site:phpbb-seo.com

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=si ... bb-seo.com

And it's actually"phpbb+forums" to be banned now : http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=ph ... &FORM=QBRE

And they claim they run a smart enough filter to only flag few queries lol

Again it seems MSN Search is being very cautious with phpBB.
What if they'd do it with other php scripts as well, they are all vulnerable.

I think that the security issue, if ever was, is not a good reason to do this, is MSN Search this vulnerable they need to alter results this much ?

What could be the point for a malware to generate traffic on MSN Search ?

Is there really a phpBB threat against MSN or what

Sometime I don't understand them

[Peter77]

That is strange.. I thought I read somewhere that search.msn.com is in the process of rebuilding thier search or BETA stage? maybe they really are that vulnerable at this time. crazy msn

[dcz]

Actually I recently observed Captcha confirm while performing Searches with Google related to phpBB.

So it seems something is going on search engine wise, but Google seems to filter queries a lot better and is asking for a confirmation code to continue and proceed with results when you see the warning message.

It seems they are all fighting against illegitimate queries, and phpbb is a hot keyword it seems.

Now the thing is, Google method is again a lot more efficient as it's not linked to just searched terms as for MSN and won't block the results upon warning.

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