What is this website? 1

[benlinkknilneb]

Hi all,

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but I didn't see anything that fit it better...

Our company uses Symantec Web Security to filter websites on all work-related PCs. We admins get email notifications after things have been blocked, which we then investigate and forward to the area managers if we find the employee's surfing to be out of line. Lately, we've been getting a lot of messages about

http://bc.us.yahoo.com

followed by "/" and then a bunch of seemingly random text. Can anyone explain what this stuff is? My best guess is that it's a proxy that handles Yahoo! logins, but I am not sure. When I go to the url with all the text, I get a blank page. When I go to the url as listed above, it simply says "do you Yahoo?".

I have Googled it and Yahood it... no one seems to give any information about this.

Ben

There's no place like 127.0.0.1.

 

[Dollie]

Is it the yahoo messenger?

What port is it using?

 

[benlinkknilneb]

It shouldn't be the messenger; we don't have it installed and users cannot run install processes. As for the port number, I don't get much information from my filter's message. This is a sample of the URL that comes to me from the Web Security system:

http://bc.us.yahoo.com/b?P=1R2SMs6....1010/D=REC/B=2790296&Q=0&O=0.7616477448312411

Ben

There's no place like 127.0.0.1.

 

[Dollie]

It resolves to 216.109.112.136, bs1.ads.vip.dcn.yahoo.com. Wild guess would be that it's an ad server. You might want to check your users again, it still looks like the messenger. I got a few hits on the site in USENET, but not enough to get info from it. Not listed in senderbase, so it's not a mail server.

You might want to try blocking it and see who screeches....

HTH

 

[benlinkknilneb]

That's the fun part... it's already blocked. That's why I'm getting these alerts. I was trying to find out what it was in order to determine whether a department manager would need to be notified. We allow some surfing (like cnn.com or msn.com), but not webmail sites or places like Yahoo Personals. Thanks for your help; have a star!

Ben

There's no place like 127.0.0.1.

 

[Thadeus]

Ben, I think it is a pop-up-server. That is why I believe you get a blank page when you attempt to go to the address directly.

Also, try googling on "bc.us yahoo.com" and you will find many more hits with the entire "bc.us.yahoo.com"

~Thadeus

 

[Dimandja]

I think that is the way Yahoo indicates to the browser where to go fetch the body of a message. The URL takes a parameter which resolves to the actual location of the message.

However you would need to have the appropriate privileges when clicking on that link as you did. Without those proviledges, you'd draw a blank.

Also, the location of the message is volatile. It does expire. You may have seen it expires when Yahoo occasionally tells you to retry retrieving your mail (this action refreshes the parameter(s) to that link).