[ insider_reports_insider ]
Google And Yahoo Tout Secure Searching
SecurityProNews
Staff Writer
2008-10-27
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Google's blog post about its "This site may harm your computer" warning in the search results and how webmasters can have Google check their sites for infections comes at an interesting time considering these aren't new features. Could it have something to do with Yahoo's multimedia campaign about its deal with McAfee?
 | | Google And Yahoo Tout Secure Searching |  |
Yahoo has been pretty aggressive about promoting its search features. Just yesterday I heard an advertisement describing protections embedded into Yahoo search warning users about infected sites. The ad specifically mentioned safely searching for screen savers, a query that traditionally brings back scores of malicious sites. The partnership with McAfee's SiteAdvisor is designed to prevent those results from harming visitors.
On Friday Google software engineer Oliver Fisher reminded visitors to the Webmaster Central Blog about the warnings they provide and goes into some detail about what goes into making that determination. Contrary to one theory that Google is targeting specific political sites, Fisher admits it could be an innocent grandmother's website.
"The good news is that your grandmother is still kind and loves turtles. She isn't trying to start a botnet or steal credit card numbers. The bad news is that her website or the server that it runs on probably has a security vulnerability, most likely from some out-of-date software. That vulnerability has been exploited and malicious code has been added to your grandmother's website. It's most likely an invisible script or iframe that pulls content from another website that tries to attack any computer that views the page. If the attack succeeds, then viruses, spyware, key loggers, botnets, and other nasty stuff will get installed."
So, the warnings don't mean Google's blaming grandma directly. But Google is accusing her of being badly out of date. Tell her not to sweat it, though. Anybody concerned someone has secretly added malware to their website can ask Google for a review via Webmaster Tools, which could take a few hours or up to a day.
About the Author:
SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
More insider_reports_insider Articles
Insider Reports RSS Feed
|
|
iEntry 10th Anniversary
RSS
Archive
