Google's Security

Google has started an OnlineSecurity Blog.

Any of you who read my blog, or articles page at my site, know that I was hacked. The culprit was "Malware". Looking for information about this 'nasty' in a search today I came across: Google Online Security Blog at http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/

"To protect Google's users from this threat, we started an anti-malware effort about a year ago. As a result, we can warn you in our search results if we know of a site to be harmful and even prevent exploits from loading with Google Desktop Search." Ok, yes it is absolutely a great idea to warn potential visitors that the may be infected if they go to a website.

One thing that concerns me a "tad" is this:

Even after a site that was infected in the past, but is now clean has a cache of the old "bad" pages that can turn up in searches. How does a web owner clear that. If someone turns up an old page cached which contains a malicious script, who is responsible? Could this happen? We don't have a clear answer on this yet. When we do, we'll post it here... So as I saying the Goole security blog states: "If your site has been hackedTake the site offline in order to keep from putting your site's visitors and your customers at risk. Then remove all of the offending code and fix all underlying security vulnerabilities before putting your site back online."

Ok, (I say that too much don't I) so... Okay :-) I read on and they refer web masters to a link that says

"There are three basic steps to maintaining a clean site from Identifying badware on your site Removing badware from your site Preventing badware in the future "

Source: http://www.stopbadware.org/home/security The attack on us was a little different than a malware/badwrare scenario. We didn't have malware/badware put on our site. We were attacked at someone elses website BY malware that used our computer to upload objectional content to our site.

Even though we didn't have malware/badware on our site, we used many of the same suggested remedies as we would have for malware/badware.

It's been over month since we discovered our site had been compromised, and nearly a full month since we cleaned out the bad files. Our site is still impacted by this episode and suffering the backlash from Google searches showing results for these bad pages even though they were removed at the end of April...

Oh... As for Google's Matt Cutts - he has not, as of the date of this entry, responded to the message I left on his blog. Stay tuned!

Jan

Hack Attack (Not Bill) - Continued...

It appears that malware has been downloading to unsuspecting websites with Windows update (yikes!) Read the article here:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9019118

Note: This is no doubt what happened to my site

"The threat of malicious websites hosting exploits has reached a point where Google's engineers have decided to respond with a security analysis of the pages they index. "

For websites that contain malware through no active fault of the webmaster, or sites that do not properly sanitize user contributed content, the ultimate Internet penalty could be imposed on them - a Google advisory that the site found in a search is unsafe. That could effectively destroy traffic to a site that has been hacked or designed poorly." Nick Carr calls Google's security aims a plan to police the Web.

Read more on this and my question to Matt Cutts:

http://www.jbcr-virtualsolutions.com/tips-and-articles.html#Not

Jan

Bill the Cat Hack It Wasn't - Follow-up

Just wanted to pass along some information that has helped me through this ugly period.

Both Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Toolbox have been extremely helpful with listing of keywords (seeing the bad ones disappear) and page visits. Without this kind of information I would be very much in the dark. I would also not be able to see when things are starting to change - right themselves. So if you don't Analytics or Webmaster Toolbox I highly recomend you do.

Also, as I mentioned in my article, a very nice WebProWorld moderator passed along an htaccess file which I modified to cover specific keywords and phrases that were being used. We are now in the process of alphabetizing the list to easily add need words or phrases, so it if you would like a copy just drop me a note.

Live Help Crafty Syntax has allowed me to watch who comes online and what pages they visit so I can feel secure.

I sure don't wish this on anyone, but I sure have learned a lot. If you every find yourself in this spot I will be happy to pass on what I have learned.

Jan