Sometimes Redirecting to spam/gamble site when accessing msfn.org/board

[EliraFriesnan]

On 2/23/2026 at 4:28 PM, Tripredacus said:

The thing in common is that all browsers are using an older Chromium engine.

And you know what? You're absolutely right! @D.Drakeralready conducted an investigation and concluded that

Supermium is based on an old engine, yes, most likely 109, despite claiming to be otherwise!

One of the most interesting facts, Supermium still needs experimental features to be turned on to even access modern sites, following this Dave_H asked the developer why, but the question is still un-answered!

How could he ignore Dave??!??! I mean - our Dave!

Dave_H's question on github.

https://github.com/win32ss/supermium/issues/1279#issuecomment-2762924347

Edited February 28 by EliraFriesnan
Dave_H's question on github.

[Dave-H]

That was nearly a year ago.
I'm now using Supermium 138, which spoofs itself as 142, by design, but is definitely actually 138.
It's certainly no older than that, and I never accepted the claim that the Supermium developer was deliberately falsifying the Chromium version it was using.
I have never had any redirection issues with MSFN.

[NotHereToPlayGames]

2 hours ago, Dave-H said:

I have never had any redirection issues with MSFN.

Do you have DISCORD installed on your computer?

[Dave-H]

No.

[NotHereToPlayGames]

I have spent over THIRTY HOURS trying to reproduce this redirect.  I simply can not reproduce it.

Either it is "fixed" and it hasn't been reported in this thread, or there is such an odd set of pre-requisites that it's only affecting 3 or 4 people out of hundreds of thousands.

I have installed Discord.  No real clue how to use it or what it's really for, but I have installed it because the afflicted keeps citing Discord Preview.

I simply can not reproduce this redirect.  No way, no how.  Impossible.  30hrs in - and counting...

[NotHereToPlayGames]

To the point where I now have three Discord accounts (all on "throwaway" email accounts) so that I can invite myself to my own Discord server, lol.

Probably not the best "test".  But I really really REALLY want to REPRODUCE this redirect!  As a sense of "accomplishment".

Edited February 28 by NotHereToPlayGames

[LoneCrusader]

No Discord and no Chromium derivatives here. Granted, as I said, I've not actually been redirected. But my Google search I described before still produces the same result.

[NojusK]

Greetings,

I managed to re-create this by changing my user-agent to Google's bot (Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html):

 

It explains why the search results are hijacked, because this is what the crawler sees, but why is a bigger question. I couldn't re-produce this on Windows 7 with Firefox 115.32.0 default user agent, though.

 

[NotHereToPlayGames]

28 minutes ago, NojusK said:

default user agent

"Aye, there's the rub."

This redirect simply does not happen to folks using default user agents.

So doesn't that make all of this "their fault"?
I guess I was under the impression, misguided as it were, that this redirect was happening with "default Iron", meaning DEFAULT USER AGENT, for one user.
And with "default Supermium", meaning DEFAULT USER AGENT, for another user.
There's really only 3 or 4 people that are affected.  And a dozen (?) that tried to get redirected but never were able to.

At any rate, not even the folks that posted the question still read their own thread, so we're all kind of nothing but a hamster running inside a spinnig wheel.

I kind of think the thread should have a "conclusion" posted (maybe even locked?).

I've "given up", I'm aware that user agents can cause the redirect, but I really didn't think that's what we were trying to track down.

At any rate, having followed the thread from the beginning, it would be nice to have a "real conclusion".  

Edited March 2 by NotHereToPlayGames

[Tripredacus]

There is more information about this issue that is not being shared for confidentiality reasons. There's no shade being directed with a statement like that. This isn't a client issue but if people do happen to find ways (like @NojusK did) or other specific software + versions, it is good to post that here. According to Xper, the issue doesn't seem to be with the server itself, rather likely with some other piece of infrastructure somewhere between the client and server.

The issue remains, I've had to change browsers to visit the site.

[NullEntity]

4 hours ago, Tripredacus said:

There is more information about this issue that is not being shared for confidentiality reasons. There's no shade being directed with a statement like that. This isn't a client issue but if people do happen to find ways (like @NojusK did) or other specific software + versions, it is good to post that here. According to Xper, the issue doesn't seem to be with the server itself, rather likely with some other piece of infrastructure somewhere between the client and server.

The issue remains, I've had to change browsers to visit the site.

dang that kinda sucks you'd think in the big 26 we'd have that tightened up

[Karla Sleutel]

15 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

I've "given up"

You can't! It's all hands on deck situation.

[Karla Sleutel]

15 hours ago, NojusK said:

Greetings,

I managed to re-create this by changing my user-agent to Google's bot (Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html):

Greetings, thank you very much! Changing user-agents to bots is what @EliraFriesnan suggested earlier, did you try the discord bot UA suggested by her in the ordinary browser?

[EliraFriesnan]

This whole thing gets worse and worse! Now DuckDuckGo is infected, too! Earlier I was only getting the Golden Siamese Cat icon (probably the stamp of those darned Siamese hackers), now get the full redirect in my searches!

They also hacked the direct search results I made for members' posts. @D.Draker and Dave-H, for example!

[EliraFriesnan]

I now post my full specs I used to get it. It's iPhone. I obviously removed my IP. I can only tell it to @Tripredacus .