Fake MAP Warning...

Discussion in 'Suggestions, Problems and Tests' started by David Harrison, Nov 6, 2017.

  1. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    I was just searching Google for an old thread and came across a link to www.ww.martialartsplanet.com, which Safari informed me was a site pretending to be MAP in order to steal information. The link looks entirely legit and identical, other than the extra ".ww".

    Thought I would let you guys know.
     
    Xue Sheng, axelb and Pretty In Pink like this.
  2. Pretty In Pink

    Pretty In Pink Moved on MAP 2017 Gold Award

    Interesting! What does it have on the page?
     
  3. David Harrison

    David Harrison MAPper without portfolio

    No idea, my browser gave me a warning page so I didn't pursue it.

    The quoted bit of post shown in the google search was exactly the same as the MAP page. Maybe they just copied the site wholesale to lure people in?
     
  4. axelb

    axelb Master of Office Chair Fu

    Hmm, I checked it on incognito, it looks like it is using the old MAP style. Maybe an admin knows more, it may be an alternate DNS to the old site setup for redundancy.

    It shows recent data and online status, so I'm guessing it's a legit setup of sorts connected to the same database, but worth flagging.
     
    David Harrison likes this.
  5. Moosey

    Moosey invariably, a moose Supporter

    Looks like it's just an invalid subdomain of MAP that has somehow been cached by Google. The error message itself isn't too suspicious. I think it's just because SSL certificates (that allow you to do https:// connections) are issued to specific domains, and since www.ww isn't a registered subdomain of martialartsplanet.com, it's saying that it can't verify that it's part of the real site.

    You get the same error if you try and visit http://www.i-like-horses.martialartsplanet.com - MAPs DNS is routing you to the right website but is warning you that it cannot certify that this subdomain is an authentic part of MAP because it is not included on an SSL certificate.

    I don't think it's anything suspicious.
     
  6. axelb

    axelb Master of Office Chair Fu

    :D I like horses :D I'll keep that bookmarked for a special occasion.
     
  7. Simon

    Simon Administrator Admin Supporter MAP 2017 Koyo Award

    Thank you Moosey.
     
  8. Moosey

    Moosey invariably, a moose Supporter

    No problemo! It could be worth sorting out though. I must admit, I've never had to solve this particular problem, but I think you might have a wildcard subdomain defined in your domain name service. It makes more sense to define martialartsplanet.com and www.martialartsplanet.com (and any other subdomains you use) explicitly rather than just *.martialartsplanet.com as the * wildcard could be redirecting anything.martialartsplanet.com to your server and then spitting this scary-looking error message because they're not on your SSL certificate. Even ignoring the scary-factor, you can lose Google rankings as I think Google won't treat pages accessed via a different subdomain as the same destination as a page accessed by the usual www subdomain, so it'll divide the traffic count between the two.
     
    axelb likes this.

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