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.'"

Feature

[Sonny Yatsen]

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

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:

[Hsien-Ko]

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

Re:

[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 relev

Poisoned?

[0racle]

Poisoned? Or made Better?

Re:

[tekgoblin]

1 Vote for better

Re:Poisoned?

[jhoegl]

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

Re:

[Mister Whirly]

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

Re:

[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"

Bad Summary

[sunderland56]

Better summary "Microsoft's own security web site hacked".

Re:

[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.

Security site?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it safe sex, at least?

Yank and porn in the title

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Well done.

Re:

[VortexCortex]

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

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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:

[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:

[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.

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:

[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:

[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.