
Why you can't search for phpBB on Bing - chaosmachine
http://blamcast.net/articles/bing-crash
======
1880
> phpBB has a pretty bad security record

Not exactly true. phpBB2 has a bad security record. phpBB3 has been clean
since day 1, IIRC.

~~~
ckwalsh
I work with phpBB, and felt a little awkward stepping forth and saying this,
so I'm glad somebody did.

phpBB3 has had a couple tiny problems, but nothing that could be used to
attack users of a site or propagate an issue.

~~~
calloc
And still many people will refuse to use phpBB or have anything to do with it
because of its checkered past.

~~~
drivebyacct2
I won't use phpbb or vbulletin or any of them because they feel cludgy. I
don't want signatures. Two lines of text shouldn't occupy 500 pixels on my
screen. And conversations among tons of people don't make sense when displayed
at one hierarchy. Reddit and HN have spoiled me, any sort of unmoderated
single-hierarchy forum is a chore anymore.

~~~
streptomycin
I'm out of the loop I suppose... what software would you use for, say, a
support forum or something? I still use phpBB, and it works, but I agree it
feels cludgy.

~~~
jordanlev
You might like Vanilla Forums better: <http://vanillaforums.org/>

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bingaling
For me, bing only produces errors if you don't have any bing cookies
initialized.

A presumption that bots wouldn't store+return cookies?

~~~
est
I tried

1\. visit www.bing.com first

2\. search for few random words

3\. search those URLs OP mentioned

4\. They all works now.

Looks like a bug how Bing handles cookies.

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glimcat
If it's an automated system inducing the error state, it suggests that you
could poison Bing by creating a similar error for popular keywords.

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bbg
I started using Bing recently and I noticed that I was getting error pages
intermittently, and then pretty frequently.

phpbb and topic view are returning error pages for me (on latest ff, cookies
enabled).

Another way I'm reliably getting an error page is adding parameter _&
first=201_, e.g.
[http://www.bing.com/search?q=stuff&first=201](http://www.bing.com/search?q=stuff&first=201)

This is the paging parameter, indicating you're at the 20th screen of results.

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mmuro
Can't say I've ever been to Bing on this computer, but clicking on the links
gives me the error.

However, after visiting Bing.com and then clicking on the links, they work.

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jrussbowman
Works fine for me on the mobile site. Also the api returns results
<http://www.unscatter.com/search/?q=Phpbb+%2Fbing>

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Torn
Problem still occurs for me when clicking his links - no bing cookies here as
I don't use it.

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JonoW
All the examples mentioned worked fine for me (on FF5, Chrome + IE9 on Windows
7). Weird...

~~~
sorbus
None of them work for me on Windows 7 / Chrome. My computer is being sent to
96.17.148.105 or .120 when I ping www.bing.com (pinging bing.com goes to
65.55.175.254, which times out), in case that's useful to anyone - since this
is only happening to some people, it could be an issue which isn't present on
all of Bing's servers.

~~~
JonoW
Got it to break; someone else here mentioned that when they cleared all
bing.com cookies it generated the error - I got the same when I did that...

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Kivett
They didn't fix sh*t. It's still doing the same thing for me.

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powertower
Every single one of his search examples "that breaks Bing" works for me just
fine.

Either Bing fixed this the same hour his blog post was made, or he just ran
into a temporary snag.

And his Google search of the error code on Bing is just that, a snapshot of a
temporary error that has no correlation to any particular keyword in the url.

~~~
fhars
Bing seems to do refer[r]er and/or cookie checking. If I enter the search on
www.bing.com or have a cookie from bing, a search for phpbb produces results,
if I clear all all bing cookies and enter <http://www.bing.com/search?q=phpbb>
in the location bar, I get the error.

~~~
nikcub
an unsophisticated fix for an unsophisticated exploit

if the exploit supported cookies and could mimic IE it would bypass this form
of blocking

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ahmetalpbalkan
<http://www.bing.com/search?q=topic+view> works very well on me.

~~~
divtxt
For me just now:

Ref A: 1868CAC6D8EA4D63B186C4E1C09E8822 Ref B:
22A00154B361421B403038C5A5D4A80F Ref C: Mon Aug 01 17:20:45 2011 PST

Edit: this is under Chrome incognito mode as others have mentioned

~~~
walrus
Same for me (different numbers, though). I'm not surprised, though—I'm on an
EC2 VPN, which some internet services are somewhat biased against (notably
Stack Overflow).

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mackie
Either that – or Bing itself is getting blocked from spidering Google on these
queries ;)

