**UPDATE**
MSN has been replaced by Bing in the latest version:
New in Version 3.1.3 (2009-06-07):
* Changed MSN Live Search to Bing
* Exclude categories also now exludes the category itself and not only the posts
* Pings now use the new WordPress HTTP API instead of Snoopy
* Fixed bug that in localized WP installations priorities could not be saved
* The sitemap cron job is now cleared after a manual rebuild or after changing the config
* Adjusted style of admin area for WP 2.8 and refreshed icons
* Disabled the “Exclude categories” feature for WP 2.5.1, since it doesn’t have the required functions yet
Like many WP users, I have Google XML Sitemaps installed to automatically generate new sitemaps and ping major search engines after every new post. I wanted to add Bing to the list so i dug around the code a bit and figured out that Bing’s sitemap ping service is almost exactly the same as MSN’s. It doesn’t take much to get Bing added to the list of search engines:
sitemap-core.php:382
var $_usedBing = false; var $_bingUrl = ''; var $_bingSuccess = false; var $_bingStartTime = 0; var $_bingEndTime = 0; function StartBingPing($url) { $this->_usedBing = true; $this->_bingUrl = $url; $this->_bingStartTime = $this->GetMicrotimeFloat(); $this->Save(); } function EndBingPing($success) { $this->_bingEndTime = $this->GetMicrotimeFloat(); $this->_bingSuccess = $success; $this->Save(); } function GetBingTime() { return round($this->_bingEndTime - $this->_bingStartTime,2); }
sitemap-core.php:1047
$this->_options["sm_b_pingbing"]=true; //Auto ping Bing
sitemap-core.php:2254
//Ping Bing if($this->GetOption("b_pingbing") && !empty($pingUrl)) { $sPingUrl="http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=" . urlencode($pingUrl); $status->StartBingPing($sPingUrl); $pingres=$this->RemoteOpen($sPingUrl); if($pingres==NULL || $pingres===false || strpos($pingres,"Thanks for submitting your sitemap")===false) { $status->EndBingPing(false,$this->_lastError); } else { $status->EndBingPing(true); } }
sitemap-ui.php:650
if($status->_usedBing) { if($status->_bingSuccess) { echo "<li>" .__("BING was <b>successfully notified</b> about changes.",'sitemap'). "</li>"; $at = $status->GetBingTime(); if($at>4) { echo "<li class=\sm_optimize\">" . str_replace("%time%",$at,__("It took %time% seconds to notify BING.com, maybe you want to disable this feature to reduce the building time.",'sitemap')) . "</li>"; } } else { echo "<li class=\"sm_error\">" . str_replace("%s",$status->_bingUrl,__('There was a problem while notifying BING.com. View result','sitemap')) . "</li>"; } }
sitemap-ui.php:767
<li> <input type="checkbox" id="sm_b_pingbing" name="sm_b_pingbing" <?php echo ($this-/>sg->GetOption("b_pingbing")==true?"checked=\"checked\"":"") ?> /> <label for="sm_b_pingbing">< ?php _e('Notify BING about updates of your Blog', 'sitemap') ?></label><br /> <small>< ?php echo str_replace("%s",$this->sg->GetRedirectLink('sitemap-lwt'),__('No registration required, but you can join the BING Webmaster Tools to check crawling statistics.','sitemap')); ?></small> </li>
After you’ve modified the files, check go to your admin section > Settings > XML-Sitemap and regenerate your sitemap manually. You should see “BING was successfully notified about changes.” right under the MSN entry. Way to go!

Interesting things you find in a 404 error log
I’ve been using redirection to keep 404 error logs on my site for some time. Occasionally I let it get too big and clear it out. Today I checked on it after a few hours and found some interesting errors in a fairly short time frame.
First off, we have a bot that appears to originate from China. It seems to be scanning for random rar files such as 8.27.rar, 8.28.rar, and so on. I can only assume that its looking for a toolkit or bot package of some kind… possibly one that it can hack into and hijack for itself. Just speculation… I’m sure someone could tell me exactly what this is if they wanted…

Next we have a typical RFI scan bot digging around where it shouldn’t. This is likely the most common attack your server will experience. Cheap botherders looking for easy roots…

Another bot scanning for remote file inclusion vulnerabilities to exploit:

Here is an interesting “attack” looking for certain files used by WordPress plugins. In this case, the person (a spammer) is looking for certain files used by CommentLuv, a plugin that allows for easy “dofollow” backlinks. There are a few bots and scripts out there that scrape search engine results looking for signs of these plugins, then the list is exported and another piece of code searches through the resulting urls to see if any of them actually have the code.


Here is another example of this type of activity from today:
Even less interesting is Bing bots constant bombardment of really ancient non existent files that have been on my site for MANY months. I don’t know where it got this list of my files to spider, but it really ought to find a better source. Even slow ass Yahoo slurp hasn’t touched these old files in forever…