Latest Site Notices

Dumbledore · #1 (**permalink**) 11-14-2011, 05:46 PM

Many of our members have noticed Malware warnings when visiting our site lately.

Something like this:

Clicking the link to the diagnostics page would give you this:

Quote:

What is the current listing status for www.snitchseeker.com/gallery/albums?

This site is not currently listed as suspicious.
Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 1 time(s) over the past 90 days.

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 3 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 1 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2011-11-12, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2011-11-10.
Malicious software includes 2 trojan(s).
Malicious software is hosted on 1 domain(s), including q3s.ru/.
This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS46475 (LIMESTONENETWORKS).

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?

Over the past 90 days, www.snitchseeker.com/gallery/albums did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.

Has this site hosted malware?

No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

This warning showed up because Google added a new feature to protect people from malicious sites and to help make the web a safer place. They scan all files on websites around the web (including ours) and if they find any suspicious looking code, they put up that warning to anybody who attempts to view any page anywhere on the site, regardless of if the section was flagged or not. The entire site gets the warning once any file on any section is found to contain malicious code.

In our case, the malicious code was an invisible iframe which hackers had placed in unused index files in our gallery. REPEAT: The files containing the malicious code were in UNUSED pages in our gallery - pages not linked to from anywhere and which nobody can visit. So nobody was at any time in danger of getting infected. But Google plays it safe and flagged our site anyway, just in case.

I have found and manually removed all the infected files, and resubmitted our site for Google to check. Yesterday we got confirmation from Google that the malicious files indeed are removed and our site has returned to good standing and is no longer flagged.

See screen from our Google webmaster tools confirmation (screen taken 13 Nov 2011):

The days leading up to November 13th, the message was this:

I hope this explains everything clearly for all of you. Bottom line: Nobody was ever in any real danger of infection, and now ALL files on our server (even ones not accessed by site visitors) have been cleaned and all malicious tags have been removed. Google has confirmed this and has removed the warning.

I apologize for any worries or inconvenience this might have caused you. Thank you for keeping us on our toes!

Love from your faithful headmaster,
Richard Harris aka Dumbledore

Ladybug · 11-14-2011, 06:14 PM

I thought it was just my computer at first! I was confused because Google Chrome liked SS before so I put it down as my computer. Then when I heard other people were getting the same problem I began to get a little worried.

But I'm so glad it's been fixed! Thank You!

James_Potter · 11-14-2011, 07:48 PM

I'm glad it got fixed! I saw others talking about it and I hadn't seen it. But eventually my Google Chrome was telling me the same thing.

Thanks everyone!

RN_2012 · 11-14-2011, 08:05 PM

I never saw the message. But thanks for taking care of it

Connie · 11-14-2011, 08:06 PM

Thank you for your diligence and hard work to keep all us SnitchSeekers safe.

**DanialRadFAN01** · 11-14-2011, 08:35 PM

Thanks again Rich for all of your tech-awesomeness!

hpluvr037 · 11-14-2011, 08:54 PM

Thanks for figuring that out. You guys rock, SS staff!

iceblossom22 · 11-15-2011, 01:20 AM

Thanks for solving it! I thought it was just me...

YOU ROCK SS Staff!

*Tommehbell* · 11-15-2011, 02:03 AM

Glad it was nothing serious. I downloaded a virus and It was not fun! My computer died and it was so sad

So thank you for getting this fixed!

Rupert-Grint-Fan · 11-15-2011, 02:31 AM

Oh THANK YOU! I got real scared when it popped up and I couldn't get on for three days

I thought I was gonna die without this amazing site! Yeah that's right, I'm addicted

kayquilz · 11-15-2011, 02:31 AM

I knew SS would never EVER get infected...I was so confused cuz I thought SS was so safe. I thought my computer was just being stupid! so yay!

pinkphoenix · 11-15-2011, 04:08 AM

Thanks for being so quick to take care of it. I was worried since it happened out of the blue and seemed really odd.

cheeseStrings · 11-15-2011, 05:46 AM

Yeah, I also didn't see the message, but thanks for repairing it!!

MUDBL00Dpride · 11-15-2011, 10:14 AM

Ahh. I was too scared that something might happen to my laptop, so I was SS-less for like.. 3 days. Very boring. D:

alchemist_18 · 11-15-2011, 10:32 AM

Thanks it was solved. But I wander why when I accessed SS with GC it have the warning, while I accessed SS with firefox didn't have the warning?

Tegz · 11-15-2011, 11:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alchemist_18

Thanks it was solved. But I wander why when I accessed SS with GC it have the warning, while I accessed SS with firefox didn't have the warning?

That's simply because Google chrome has the Google diagnostics tool installed on the browser while other browsers do not. You can turn off Google Diagnostics if you go to the Under the Hood section of your Chrome browser. If 'Enable phishing and malware protection' is checked, then the Google Diagnostic tool will automatically check for malware hosted on a website, which is awesome because that is how we found out there was a problem in the first place.