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Can't someone just analyze the Bing toolbar binary and figure out what's actually going on here?


The Bing toolbar only sends information back to Microsoft, it doesn't decide what to do with it. For this kind of a task it would be simpler to use a packet sniffer anyway.


Thanks for the clarification. Does the toolbar send a notification to Microsoft on every click? Or only clicks on Google SERPs?


The data's sent back via SSL, from what I've read, and disassembling is not going to be practical.


On the other hand, if it uses the OS HTTPS infrastructure, someone could probably add a root cert to IE and "MitM" themselves. If it doesn't, it's just a matter of finding and replacing the key; while that's not completely straightforward, it is done.

Darn, now it's really tempting to fire up some VMs. I don't have time for that.




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