SOT, but... what the heck is MS FrontPage?

Hi,
My sites are hit on a regular basis by this agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MS FrontPage 14.0)
- it makes requests with methods OPTIONS or HEAD which are forbiden in my sites;
- it makes requests for pages that does not exist, like
- /_vti_inf.html
- /_vti_bin/shtml.exe/_vti_rpc
The result is that the visitors are tagged as "bad bot".
What are they looking for?
Should I let them go or what?


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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage
Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:354626

FrontPage is an HTML authoring tool from Microsoft. It's no longer
available, and is famous for crappy HTML. It uses WebDAV to publish to
sites. The HTTP verbs it's using are WebDAV verbs. It's looking for
FrontPage Extensions.

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software
http://www.figleaf.com/
http://training.figleaf.com/

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Why on earth would you forbid HEAD?
Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:354628

So, do I suppose well if I suppose the user is trying to see if he can edit my site if it is accessible to FrontPage and is not protected?
Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:354648

Front Page is an abomination made by Microsoft a few years ago, It was a
piss poor attempt at drag/drop HTML.
The only thing worse than Front Page were the IIS extensions that would
routinely bring IIS to it's knees, or blow up IIS entirely.

It looks like someone is trying to hit your sites with a Front Page
Editor or trying to find the FP specific files/folders to attempt an
exploit.

deny.. deny...deny

Every time someone uses MS Front Page, a kitten dies..
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Frontpage was not originally development by Microsoft, they bought ir or
the original company, realised Frontpage was an abomination and dumped it.
It has been discontinued and unsupported for many years, it has all kinds
of security issues.


On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 12:04 AM, Scott Stewart
<webm...@sstwebworks.com>wrote:
Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:354650

As we used to say back in the day: "Friends don't let friends use
FrontPage". IIRC it dates back to '95. It mangled code. The only thing
worse was NetScape's authoring tool which rendered HTML utterly unreadable.

Ahhhh the bad old days ===> SHUDDER.

G!
--
Gerald Guido
http://www.myinternetisbroken.com
Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:354651

Not necessarily. I think if you have FP installed and you use IE and
you have things configured a certain way, FP will just try to see if
the site supports FP Extensions. I think that's more likely than
someone actively looking for FP sites nowadays.
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Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:354653

Ok, but then, if he is using IE, shouldn't MSIE appear somewhere in the user agent ?
IF the user agent is "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MS FrontPage 14.0)" is the guy really using IE?
Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:354655

I thought it was, because the response was not 200, but it is not.
The response is actaully 206, which is normal.
Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:354656

I have no idea, but I do know that lots of things have historically
identified themselves as Mozilla for compatibility reasons. Maybe FP
has a built-in web browsing interface. Maybe it's Visual Studio, which
also has (had?) the ability to use FP server extensions.
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