MSN - The Missing Link
OK okok ... this is BIZZARRE... I'm here to report an incredibly STRANGE *bug* (bug?) in MSN Messenger.
It was discovered when my buddy Tim tried to send me this link over MSN:
http://archive.scripting.com/2005/06/11#peopleWithErasers
5 minutes later after the conversation stopped dead because he thought i was not replying to his link and I didn't see it, I realised that he had sent a link and he realised that I had not received it. Odd, we thought. He tried sending it again and again. Then finally had to describe the URL to me.
Then I tried to send it back to him and he couldn't see it either. Was it the #? What was it about this specific URL which meant it wasn't coming through.
Ten minutes later, after some rigorous testing, we thought we had it all worked out. Twenty minutes later after even more rigorous testing we got it.
MSN Messenger will not send or receive any messages containing linkified URLs which contain the exact string ".scr". (Yes, pretty simple thing, but it took a long time to narrow it down to that ;))
Now that's pretty wierd. It does make more sense than our original hypothesis which was that it blocked all links to "scripting.com". A ".scr" file in Windows is a screensaver! Tim pointed out that screensavers are actually programs, and that if you rename an exe file to .scr, it will still execute. So possibly, downloading scr files can be tricky for noobies.
But strange that it blocks ALL links containing ".scr" and not just those that end with it. Anyway, a night well spent ;)
Special thanks to Tim and Andrew for helping research and test this (bloglinks to the right).
"Yoink dot adios, backslash losers!"
- Snake (The Simpsons)
posted by Eat_My_Shortz @ 12:43 am
7 comments
7 Comments:
Update: It censors .pif too!
Heres a blog which backs it up: http://www.thatcanadiangirl.co.uk/blog/2005/04/09/new-msn-7-out/
Odd that this blog explicitly says it DOESN'T block .scr, when, it does.
A quick google search shows that she's the only person on the entire Internet aware of this phenomenon. (I'm sure there are others, if I looked a little harder) ;)
On the GoG forums, they have been warning about .pif through messengers - .pif is a dos executable file. So it is a good thing if you cannot send a link through with .pif on it :-)
Actually PIF is a Windows 3.1 shortcut to a DOS executable. But just for some wierd reason, if you rename an exe to a scr or pif file, it will still be executable. That explains why.
What is wrong about this is that it doesn't just block files of that extension, but also web domains which begin with those letters. It's very wrong because it means there are sites out there that people have paid for which cannot be sent over MSN and therefore are at a disadvantage.
It would be a very simple algorithm to detect, for example if the ".scr" string appeared after any single slashes in the URL. If the text .scr appeared before a single slash (ie. in the domain name) then it can't be any more harmful than any other domain.
There should be Darwin awards for software, and MSN should also block messages containing .com
*in Mr. Garrison voice*
MSN messenger is bad, mmkay? Everything by Microsoft is bad, mmkay?
Full of bugs. Full of unrefined code.
Not that I'd know any of this.....
If you're going to block software on the basis of risk to users who don't know it's an executable format, .com is the perfect candidate!
The reason I say this (and the reason its WORSE than .pif and .scr) is that, not only is it unknown as an executable format, but .com is also very well known as a top-level domain.
Therefore new users are more likely to run it. Hence I see no other alternative that MSN block all links containing ".com" just in case ;)
I have had experiences where it blocks .jpg but not .jpeg or .JPG. It's weird.
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