MSN.com Redirect Scan

by StankDawg  (StankDawg@hotmail.com)

If you visit MSN.com (which you may do, as it is the default home page in a lot of circumstances) you may notice that the page may be customized based on your settings.

  For example, a Dell system sometimes defaults to the homepage: DellNet by MSN which uses a custom module in the MSN system to deliver Dell information.  I found this both annoying, but at the same time, interesting.

After a little reverse engineering, I discovered that you can either go to these sites directly, or you can be redirected to these sites from: go.msn.com by using the proper URL parameters.  It turns out that it redirects to a specific page customized to a specific company or group based on the parameters passed via the URL.

For example, not only can you type in the direct DellNet address listed above, but you can also use the redirected go.msn.com address listed below to get to the same place.  I decided to hammer through some patterns and see what other sites offer custom services.

The results are listed below:

URL Company/Site http://go.msn.com/0/0/1.asp Microsoft - IE5.5 SP1 download (redirects to an apology page) http://go.msn.com/0/0/2.asp Dell http://go.msn.com/0/1/0.asp Dell - "ebar" (error page, apparently this no longer exists) http://go.msn.com/0/1/1.asp Microsoft - Hotmail http://go.msn.com/0/1/2.asp Dell http://go.msn.com/0/3/1.asp Dell http://go.msn.com/0/3/2.asp MSN - MSN Member http://go.msn.com/0/3/3.asp MSN - Canadian version http://go.msn.com/0/3/4.asp MSN - My MSN (customized page) http://go.msn.com/0/3/5.asp Best Buy http://go.msn.com/0/3/6.asp Charter Communications - Broadband ISP Home Page http://go.msn.com/0/3/7.asp Dell http://go.msn.com/0/3/8.asp Disney http://go.msn.com/0/3/9.asp Best Buy http://go.msn.com/0/3/10.asp Charter Communications - Broadband ISP Home Page http://go.msn.com/0/3/11.asp Dell http://go.msn.com/0/3/12.asp Disney http://go.msn.com/0/3/13.asp MSN - MSN Member http://go.msn.com/0/3/14.asp Qwest http://go.msn.com/0/3/15.asp Staples http://go.msn.com/0/3/16.asp Verizon http://go.msn.com/0/3/17.asp Qwest http://go.msn.com/0/3/18.asp Staples http://go.msn.com/0/3/19.asp United Airlines http://go.msn.com/0/3/20.asp Verizon http://go.msn.com/0/5/1.asp Verizon - Direct Link to MSN Groups http://go.msn.com/0/6/1.asp Verizon - Direct Link to MSN Shopping http://go.msn.com/0/7/1.asp Verizon - Direct Link to MSN Money Central http://go.msn.com/0/8/1.asp Verizon - Direct Link to My MSN (customized page)

This was done manually during a training session, where I sat in the back of the class unchallenged and bored to tears.

I only went through some limited ranges in my testing.  It could easily be scripted to check for a larger series of numbers.  A couple of them seemed interesting, such as the "ebar" page.

Maybe there are some other software download pages that could be interesting.  Maybe there are ways to login or access customized systems that weren't intended for public consumption.  Just think of how many other sites may be out there on the web that may work the same way.  See what others you can find!