GWG marked as unsafe by mcaffee

Lishy

Lishy

Forge Runner

Join Date: Jan 2008

I logged on earlier today to notice mcaffee marked this website as unsafe.
Apparently the web advisor says it uses browser exploits to obtain information.
Personally, I had gotten Vundo once before from GWG. So I must ask one single question:
How friggen complicated is it for the administer to simply keep this website clean and filter ads you KNOW are unsafe?
This is one of the only few popular websites I know that deals with this crap.
And personally, I'm really damn tired of how this website constantly goes from safe to unsafe.

God forbid avast, firefox, and noscript would let me down. But there NEEDS to be more consideration for those that don't.

Braxton619

Braxton619

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Jul 2008

A/W

i dont know much..

it scared me too..

crazybanshee

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Jun 2006

Look out!

E/

Yeah I've had guru on my untrusted noscripts don't allow anything to run list forever. I know it's tough for the admins, because they have better things to do than constantly hunt down and check everything, but yeah... hax

HuntMaster Avatar

HuntMaster Avatar

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Feb 2007

Around

Pillar's of Earth [ROCK]

W/

It is a problem, which is one reason why I never come here unless I know I'm protected.

Inde

Site Contributor

Join Date: Dec 2004

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kain Fz View Post
I logged on earlier today to notice mcaffee marked this website as unsafe.
Apparently the web advisor says it uses browser exploits to obtain information.
Personally, I had gotten Vundo once before from GWG. So I must ask one single question:
How friggen complicated is it for the administer to simply keep this website clean and filter ads you KNOW are unsafe?
This is one of the only few popular websites I know that deals with this crap.
And personally, I'm really damn tired of how this website constantly goes from safe to unsafe.

God forbid avast, firefox, and noscript would let me down. But there NEEDS to be more consideration for those that don't. Well, I guess first off thanks for letting us know. Haven't heard of anyone else saying McAfee marked this as unsafe so first I've heard. If you are actually looking for information, which it doesn't seem you are considering the tone of your post, I'd be happy to provide that. I can tell you that right now this website is clean. There's no virus or exploiting going on. Perhaps McAfee is a few months behind or simply that you hit the website when we were having problems and it's now flagged on your local machine only. I guess I'll answer the only question you did ask:

It's extremely complicated considering that popular anti-virus software websites themselves get infected, one as recent as last month itself with a virus. What? Didn't know that? No website can guarantee it's safe, shocker but there's Internet 101 for you. Second off, it wasn't too long ago that McAfee flagged Google, ESPN.com, Verizon Wireless and more as being infected and unsafe. Symantec has had the same problems.

And if you care to know what problems we've had, since I find it extremely ironic you are just assuming all your information and have the majority of it wrong, our problems seem to have come from a single attacker exploiting vulnerabilities. A spammer. GuildWarsGuru wasn't even the target, we were a casualty of one of our other network sites. We have upgraded all our software and have our server continually monitored, we try to stay on top of this but you also need to remember this is not our full-time job. We are one of the last independent fansites not having a major corporate backer. We do this for the love of it and because we enjoy that. We don't sit at our computer, as in a company, and do this for 8+ hours a day.

Since you're the first to report this problem, and didn't care to provide anymore supporting documentation or screenshots, I'll look into it. But please, if you are going to report a problem next time, a little bit of information goes a long way to helping us more quickly resolve it.

Acehigh

Acehigh

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2006

Steel Phoenix[StP]/Terror Of The Justice Salmon[FisH]



It's showing the same thing for me. So there's the screen for comfirmation purposes.

Edit: Hahahahahaha, just now Macafee shows the site to be clean.

Inde

Site Contributor

Join Date: Dec 2004

Yes AceHigh, I went to McAfee's website to confirm. Thank you for the screenshot. It's all extremely unhelpful though unfortunately since there's nothing on McAfee telling me what was scanned, what was found or anything else. Just a red status. Regardless I have sent off an email asking them to retest.

I've used AVG and this website comes up clean.
With Avast this website comes up clean.
MicroTrends nothing.
Norton I get nothing as well.

I'll continue looking.

Lishy

Lishy

Forge Runner

Join Date: Jan 2008

Inde, firstly, I'd like to apoligize for my frustration earlier.
Anyways, all I can say from the standpoint I'm currently at is to wish good luck in resolving this.

It seems a lot of Guild Wars sites get hurt by a lot of attacks. Is it perhaps the same people who advirtise real trade for gold ingame, who're also the people to hack accounts?
Or, is the way we get our accounts hacked by sharing out passwords with GWG and GWG's natural vulnerability sending the attackers the passowrds, there for leading them to perhaps your game password?

Either way, I apoligize about my OP.

Acehigh

Acehigh

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2006

Steel Phoenix[StP]/Terror Of The Justice Salmon[FisH]

Well, it's back to green status, so it's shouldn't be a problem anymore.

Acehigh

Acehigh

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jun 2006

Steel Phoenix[StP]/Terror Of The Justice Salmon[FisH]

McAfee is being stupid with this site. It keeps showing the site go from green status to red status and vice versa.

Inde

Site Contributor

Join Date: Dec 2004

AceHigh, it takes 5-10 days for them to do a retest of this site. And since we don't know "when" they actually tested (see my above comment about how useless the information McAfee provides actually is) this could have been there for a while. I'm in communication with them by email so it's just a waiting game.

Inde

Site Contributor

Join Date: Dec 2004

All right and here we go, I feel vindicated:

Quote:
EWeek.com, a technology news site owned by Ziff Davis Enterprise, in February displayed an ad on its homepage masquerading as a promotion for LaCoste, the shirt maker. The retailer hadn't placed the ad -- a hacker had, to direct users to a Web site where harmful programs would be downloaded to their computers, says Stephen Wellman, director of community and content for Ziff Davis.

Similar attacks occurred across a series of News Corp.-owned sites in February, including AmericanIdol.com, FoxNews.com and IGN.com. In January, clicking on an ad on Major League Baseball's MLB.com led visitors to a site with malware.

Digital Spy, Ziff Davis, Fox and MLB all say that immediately after they detected the incidents, they isolated the ads and removed them from their sites.

Digital Spy sells the ad space on its forums section, visited by three million unique visitors a month, through a number of other companies, called ad networks. If one ad network doesn't sell the space to a marketer directly, it often will sell it to another network. The space also can be outsourced to ad exchanges, another set of companies, which hold an electronic auction for online ads.

"As that chain gets longer, it becomes more and more difficult to vet the ads to make sure there are no viruses in them," says James Welsh, co-founder of Digital Spy, owned by Hachette Filipacchi."There was a lack of scrupulous checking somewhere along that line, and an attacker seized upon this and used it as a route to inject some very nasty malware onto our site."
http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=446406&Page=0 So as you can see, yes this is a very hard problem to manage. With IGN.com, FoxNews.com, AmericanIdol.com, MLB.com, DigitalSpy.co.uk, EWeek.com all had the same problem as Guru this year. Not an isolated incident and not the last any website will see unfortunately. Even the major players.

fenix

fenix

Major-General Awesome

Join Date: Aug 2005

Aussie Trolling Crew HQ - Event Organiser and IRC Tiger

Ex Talionis [Law], Trinity of the Ascended [ToA] ????????????????&#

W/

Personally I would start with McAfee as a problem. I wouldn't trust it with my computer security, as it is notorious for bringing up false detections, and failing to detect real viruses.

I'd definitely recommend installing Avira. Not only is it free, but it's one of the fastest anti virus programs, has a very low footprint (not much memory needed to run) and has an almost perfect detection rate. I would suggest AVG as well, but when compared to Avira it is slow and clunky and a memory hog.

If you want the best, get NOD32. There's no other option, really. NOD32 is the best anti virus there is. It also costs money. But that's up to you.

Regarding ads bringing through viruses, I've never had it happen to me personally. Then again, NOD32 detects absolutely everything anyway, so that's probably part of it.

Abedeus

Abedeus

Grotto Attendant

Join Date: Jan 2007

Niflheim

R/

Fenix is right, I use AVG on my PC and NOD32 on my laptop, both are better than McAfee.

Spiritz

Forge Runner

Join Date: Apr 2007

DMFC

What ppl have to remember with ads is -
Its hard to weed out any bad sites until its too late.
I dont know the actual process but like Inde said about false ones - its damn hard to weed them out before the damage is done.
Yes its hard for sites like guru as they need the ads to help pay for webhosting but also consider how hard it is for the sites like Digital Spy -they get bad infected ads and it affects them as it destroys the image they have and they get less customers.

Also remember the 'Bad Ads' etc are not kept on guru`s webservers so its harder for Inde & co to detect them untill sadly its too late.
Ad sites need a new method of protection that serves both them and sites using them and a better form of punishment for the perps that try and get them online.

Black Metal

Black Metal

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Jan 2009

N/

My McAfee has been registering GWG as unsafe for about 10 days, and has been that way solid through right now. My Firefox looks just like the screenie posted above.

I'm sympathetic to Inde that it's not his nor GWG's fault, and that McAfee needs to rescan or do whatever to reflect the site's true status.

However, my AT&T / Yahoo internet connection requires McAfee, so I don't have a choice.

Inde

Site Contributor

Join Date: Dec 2004

Black Metal, a retest of the site is still pending. When they give me an update I can give all of you an update. But I have sent off emails to them, they are aware, I've sent off an email to our server admin and he is aware. We are just waiting on McAfee to run the site again.

Snograt

Snograt

rattus rattus

Join Date: Jan 2006

London, UK GMT??0 ??1hr DST

[GURU]GW [wiki]GW2

R/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Black Metal View Post
However, my AT&T / Yahoo internet connection requires McAfee, so I don't have a choice. That is not nice. Any ISP that requires that you use their (presumed) partner's AV should be taken out and shot.

KZaske

KZaske

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Jun 2006

Boise Idaho

Druids Of Old (DOO)

R/Mo

Quote:
Originally Posted by Snograt View Post
That is not nice. Any ISP that requires that you use their (presumed) partner's AV should be taken out and shot. If they make any sound or are still moving they should be shot again. However as I understood it most ISP's offer AV subscriptions to there customers. First I had heard of one that actually requied you to use one. I must say part of me likes the concept, but they picked one of the worse ones to partner with.

kzap

kzap

Site Contributor

Join Date: Dec 2004

R/Mo

uninstall mcafee site advisor

Inde

Site Contributor

Join Date: Dec 2004

Wow, I finally got a response. Took 2 full months and 5 emails:

"I am pleased to inform you that your site now has a green SiteAdvisor rating."

REJOICE!

Yang Whirlwind

Yang Whirlwind

~ Retired ~

Join Date: Nov 2005

Copenhagen, Denmark (GMT +1)

E/

That's to slow Inde, you should send a formal complaint. They are fast enough to mark sites, they should be equally swift in removing the flag!

Tell them that you will advertise against using their product if they don't speed things up - that might get their attention