Chrome is blocking wired.com | Hacker News Reader

Chrome is blocking wired.com

wired.com

Often when this happens with a large site, it's because of an malware-laden ad. Typically with a smaller site, it's because the site was somehow hacked or didn't stay fully up-to-date on security patches.

Added: Looks like it was an actual hack, not just a bad ad. The Wired folks will want to make sure there's no more iframes from hxxp://zlu bob.org. Folks can use our free Fetch as Google tool to see what we see when we try to fetch a page. You can find out more about the Fetch as Google tool here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/158587?hl=en

This happens to many small business sites.

If they leave their WordPress un-patched, or have a crappy plugin installed with security holes, or their FTP info is guessed, etc, hackers drop some malicious Javascript on their sites, and the next thing you know, their site cannot be accessed in Chrome, and usually Firefox as well. Depending on what services pick-up on the bad javascript.

For me, it usually takes a day(ish) from the time we are notified of the issue, update the sites, remove the malware, install webmaster tools from Google, submit and wait for the review to be unblocked.

On one hand, this is very frustrating, but on the other hand, many small businesses would have no idea their site had been hacked without it being blocked.

The only thing I'd like to see personally is if Google were somehow able to notify the domain registrant of the block via email so they find out right away, and not after a few weeks (or longer) in some cases. Some small business owners don't check their sites very often. We like to monitor our client sites, but sometimes new clients come to us with these problems and have no idea how long they've been down.

I connected my site to Google's Webmaster Tools.

I get notified via email when Google finds any issues on my site.

Yes, but they still block websites that are not connected to Google Webmaster Tools, and the site owners may not realize it. It would be nice if they notified the domain registrant as a heads-up because most small biz site owners that find their way to me may have sites that were designed years ago that need little to no maintaining, so they don't know they've been blocked as they barely ever look at their own sites.

We explored trying to email whois contacts or standard addresses (such as webmaster@example.com or postmaster@example.com) and essentially got zero pickup. That's one of the reasons we provide Webmaster Tools, and so far it's our best channel to notify small business owners.

We can sometimes label sites as hacked in the search results, but Webmaster Tools is definitely the preferred channel for communication of stuff like this.

Thanks for the clarification, Matt. Does such an action from google also include penalizing the website in terms of page rank and search rankings?

Yes, but it varies, because we have automatic malware detection, automatic hacked site detection, and manual hacked site detection.

For example, if we manually detect that a subdirectory of a site is hacked, we may remove only that subdirectory from our search results. If your entire site is hacked, then your entire site may be demoted or removed until the site is clean.

"We explored trying to email whois contacts or standard addresses"

Ironic since the original reason for the tech contact was exactly to be notified for issues like this.

Would like to add that as a registrar though we get a reasonably good response to emails that we send. [1]

Perhaps there is something about getting an email from google that says "it's probably spam". Or any large well known company that is often the subject of spam attempts.

Even given that though it's hard for me to believe that the results were close to zero.

[1] We also find that when a domain is deleted for non payment the person frequently claims they received no email notice but then proceeds to make some reference to something that was on the email notice.

Man, we could talk about this for hours. There's a lot of nuances involved in trying to alert site owners to issues, especially at a large scale. We've tried about 6-7 approaches over the years, and I'm still not completely happy with where we are. Freehosts are especially tough (WordPress, Blogger, etc.) because whois would just never work there.

Blocked for me, Ubuntu 13.10, Firefox 28.0.

The main page is not blocked but anything I click on is blocked.

Here is the Why page:

Safe Browsing Diagnostic page for wired.com/2014/04

What is the current listing status for wired.com/2014/04?

    Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer.

What happened when Google visited this site?

    Of the 135 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 0 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2014-04-05, and suspicious content was never found on this site within the past 90 days.

    This site was hosted on 12 network(s) including AS31377 (AKAMAI-BOS), AS701 (UUNET), AS12989 (HWNG).

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

    Over the past 90 days, wired.com/2014/04 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.

How did this happen?

    In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.

Next steps:

    Return to the previous page.
    If you are the owner of this web site, you can request a review of your site using Google Webmaster Tools. More information about the review process is available in Google's Webmaster Help Center.

Chrome lists two images as "malware":

    http://www.wired.com/playbook/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/soccer_w.jpg

    http://www.wired.com/playbook/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bike-press-w.jpg

Both return actual images, so perhaps at some point in the past when wired.com was scanned these URLs redirected to somewhere malicious?

Screenshot: http://cl.ly/image/1m3g3L2v3w3C

They had a 'technical issue' earlier today it seems:

"WIRED: @Freakonomicss @hoffin205 Yeah, we had a technical issue this morning, but our tech team fixed. Waiting for @googlechrome to clear us"

https://twitter.com/wired/status/452490353283588096

Weird: http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnost...

The page essentially says "We believe this page is suspicious, and we have no evidence to back up that claim."

EDIT: They must have updated it/ busted a cache. The page is now reporting some evidence.

funny it says "Of the 20 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 0 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2014-03-25, and suspicious content was never found on this site within the past 90 days." does zero count to be blocked?

First, it's already been unblocked.

Second, this is what it says at the above link:

--SNIP--

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 26 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 4 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2014-04-05, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2014-04-05.

Malicious software is hosted on 1 domain(s), including zlubob.org/.

--SNIP--

They're doing a good thing with this, and they're helping webmasters who can't help themselves.

> First, it's already been unblocked.

It's still blocked for me, with Google branding wired.com as "a known malware distributor."

Well that's technically a correct statement.

Try:

chrome://net-internals/#dns Click "Clear host cache"

Actually the issue was that I was using Google's DNS. When I disabled that, it worked just fine. But thanks for showing me the Chrome trick.

As to the technically correct statement, don't you think that saying a site is a "known malware distributor" is a bit more sweeping than saying something more accurate like "we discovered malware on this site"?

In other words, they are using the same language I would expect to see directed towards sites that have malicious intent and should never be visited.

How should they word when the site is known to distribute malware? There is no difference between discovery and distribution, if you consider the method of discovery.

Weird, I must have had a cached copy (which is really strange since Chrome was blocking Wired for me.)

I get: Malicious software is hosted on 1 domain(s), including zlubob.org/.

It's blocking in Safari too so I think it's a MacOS diagnosis rather than a Chrome one perhaps? Or both browsers are detecting the same thing

Firefox 28 also detects it. On Ubuntu 14.04

Firefox sources their malware detection from Google.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-m...

So it makes sense the error would show up both places.

It's blocked in Windows, too.

This is almost always due to a malicious ad.

The message I got when I proceed is:

------- The website at www.wired.com contains elements from sites which appear to host malware – software that can hurt your computer or otherwise operate without your consent. Just visiting a site that contains malware can infect your computer.

Below is a list of all the unsafe elements for the page. Click on the Diagnostic link for more information on the thread for a specific element.

Malware http://www.wired.com/playbook/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/soc... Safe Browsing diagnostic page

Malware http://www.wired.com/playbook/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/bik... Safe Browsing diagnostic page -------

I wonder what's wrong with these two pictures?

The wired homepage itself is fine for me, but Firefox 28.0 is blocking both of those images in your post along with any links I try to click from the Wired homepage.

http://www.checkpoint.com/defense/advisories/public/2004/cpa... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7537719 maybe chrome can detect these even if they aren't using same dlls?

I can reproduce on Chrome 33.0.1750.154 m on Windows 8. Screenshot: http://imgur.com/cUEZJYe

The safe browsing diagnostic page shows no negative current or previous reports for wired.com despite describing it as suspicious:

http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnost...

> What is the current listing status for www.wired.com? This site is not currently listed as suspicious.

> Has this site hosted malware? No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

Any chance it's related to this?

http://www.incapsula.com/blog/world-largest-site-xss-ddos-zo...

Security company found a vulnerable Alexa Top 50 site where someone was able to inject XSS code in the comments section creating "DDoS Zombies" of the visitors.

Safari and Firefox are also blocking Wired.

(I think I accidentally downvoted you, I'm sorry.)

I just tried to go there using Chrome on Ubuntu and I got a malware warning: "Content from www.wired.com, a known malware distributor, has been inserted into this web page. Visiting this page now is very likely to infect your computer with malware."

Safari also -- not the home page but the articles. Showing up as phishing attack.

Sucuri shows wired.com as clean on all lists and not blocked by anyone: http://sitecheck3.sucuri.net/results/wired.com

Not on OSX (33.0.1750.152)

Yes on OSX 34.0.1847.11 beta

Blocks on OSX for me (33.0.1750.152) Does not block on Safari Version 7.0.3 (9537.75.14)

In my laptop (Win 7, Dell 1555):

Blocked in Chrome Version 33.0.1750.154 m

Not blocked in ie11, Firefox 20

In my Mobile (HTC One M7 4.4.2):

Neither blocked in Chrome(33.1) nor in the stock browser

Doesn't Android Chrome support malware detection?

They had some technical issue this morning, but it's supposedly fixed now. And they're just waiting for Chrome to unflag them.

The "more about" link shows that there are no malicious codes detected, etc. Maybe someone is sending false warnings?

I'm a little confused how a webpage can infect a machine with malware?

Is this typically through Java Applets/other plugins?

On a mainstream site like wired its almost always flash ads. It can also be jpegs (see http://www.checkpoint.com/defense/advisories/public/2004/cpa...) but this is rare/patched.

Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive-by_download

There are in number of ways for nasty things to happen just by visiting a page.

having hacked websites serve infected or specially crafted files that exploit 0 day bugs is a very common vector actually. like 0 day PDF reader bugs - they spread by being linked to in phishing emails for example. people click on them and boom they load a bad PDF and are drive by infected.

specially crafted jpgs and gifs have also been used to exploit overflows in image handling code.

Exploiting programming errors in the browser is one way.

Because browsers are written in very unsafe programming languages (C++), bugs are regularly exploitable so that by specially crafting the bug-triggering input data they can be fooled to scribble content-controlled data inside the browser's memory space. For example, a memory handling bug might let the page overwrite some of the browser's code with data coming from the web page.

This lets the web page break into your computer, running arbitrary code of its choosing on your box.

Browser plugins can be similarly targeted instead of the browser itself.

While some of the vectors you've mentioned could potentially be exploitable, blaming a "very unsafe programming language," isn't really a good explanation. These issues could occur in any program and any programming language -- it's not a problem specific to C languages.

Most(?) browser vulnerabilities are caused by errors in C++ code which would not be exploitable in memory safe languages. One of the goals of Mozilla's Servo is to write a browser that's memory safe without compromising performance.

I think Servo's "safety" is ultimately due to the fact that it's built on Rust. Rust, however, seems to be ultimately built on C, unless I'm mistaken (having a hard time telling by briefly glancing through their Github, but it looks that way).

My point was that it's not a C specific problem, though. Most browsers are in fact built on C, I agree. This is due primarily to the speed and performance of the language that is harder to reach with other languages.

It is definitely a more difficult language to write, as it is much more "raw," but that doesn't make it inherently unsafe to use, or any more unsafe than other languages.

Rust is self-hosted, so the compiler's written in Rust.

Care to comment down voters? If you're voting because of my rust comment, maybe read the part where I said "not sure, haven't read much about it."

If you vote because you think C is unsafe, carry on. You're wrong, though.

No, they couldn't occur in "any programming language". In fact there aren't other memory unsafe languages in wide use than C/C++.

And it's not a "potentially" thing, as is apparent to anyone following news about browser vulnerabilities. For a recent public performance, see pwn2own - http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/03/14/pwn2own-day-two-c...

Works fine for me, Chrome 33.0.1750.152 on OSX

Does block for me OSX Version 33.0.1750.152

me too 33.0.1750.152

Not on iOS in either Chrome or Safari.

Definitely on Chromium 33.0.1750.152.

Just accessed it under Chromium Version 33.0.1750.152 (256984) (arch linux) with no problems (except for some lag).

Super weird -- I'm on Arch Linux, too. Could it be DNS-related?

It's still blocked for me. I'm using Chrome Version 31.0.1650.57 on Debian Testing.

Probably some dns caching, I just rebooted and am greeted by 'malware ahead' now.

ps: Mozilla Firefox 31.0a1 is ok with wired.com

The block is lifted now. Supposedly.

Not in Android (?) Nexus 5.

Works ok on ubuntu..

Oh, and I was thinking Google were just disagreeing with somebody in Wired's management on some personal viewpoint. Silly me!

Not on Chrome for Android. Yes on Chrome for Windows. However, it's been years since wired.com has been relevant, so it won't be missed.

I always thought that using the safe browsing feature is asking for trouble so it is disabled in all my browsers. So my browser doesn't need to make an extra request to Mozilla/Google/etc every time I load a new website and the web is not censored if there is a technical issue

The browser has a local copy of the blocked sites database; so it doesn't have to do any extra request in order to check if a web site is blocked or not.

I didn't know that and I think that it is very surprising since Google usually doesn't turn down free information about it's users.

Why would they turn down the expected payment for their free services ? That would be stupid.

exactly

I believe Chrome is much more strategical than that.

Google could lose enormous market share if any major browser decided to change the default search engine. So they created their own major browser.

Chrome is not an information source for Google, it's a way to maintain Google as a default search engine.

They fund Mozilla for the same reason.

Your premise about Google's motivation for creating Chrome is belied by the fact that they were dominant in search for years before Chrome came out. They never had anything to worry about there.

Being dominant doesn't mean that there is no foreseeable threat to dominance. Preventing a hostile browser monopoly which could work against Google's search dominance is a credible motivation for Chrome (though probably not the sole motivation -- moving web technology in a direction favorable to Google's non-search roadmap was clearly a factor, as well.)

Similarly, a major reason for Android could be seen to be preventing a hostile mobile-platform monopoly which would either block or extract monopoly rents from (and thus limit the value of) Google services reaching mobile users.

Google always cared about which website you visit. They are using javascript to dynamically change the destination address of search results on Google.com using an on-click... but I guess they figured that most people who uses chrome didn't bother to change the default search engine so the small percentage of bookmark browsing (that doesnt have Google services embedded) is not worth it.

Performance side effects should be negligible, but there are some privacy concerns (your browser is asking Google for each page it visits if it is ok - thus telling G where you surf).

So when does robot slander/libel suits begin? I'd be mighty ticked if google started labelling my sites as malware when they're clearly not.

This is why we can't have nice things. Chrome was doing yeoman's work by stopping their users from going to a site that was malicious earlier today.

True, I usually wait until the facts are in, but I'm more curious about the question itself. At what point do semi-autonomous programs or constructs become liable for their words or actions.

it could be that their ads networks did in fact serve malware temporarily.

I am surprised why anyone is still using Chrome. Their debacle with remotely disabling extensions that are not from the Web Store should have spooked users enough.

I can't believe on HN of all places people are using Chrome its malware-detecting-capabilities. Friendly reminder that EVERY REQUEST you make with it enabled, will be passed through Google its filters.

You should turn all Google networking activities in your browser off. By default, there are at least five or so enabled which will happily send every request you make to Google. Some services even go as far as logging every keystroke you make.

Don't forget your tinfoil hat on the way out.

The majority of safe browsing checks happen client side (when a page matches the client side list, more info is retrieved from Google). It's covered in the appropriate section here:

https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/privacy/

If you don't trust what they are saying there, you shouldn't be using Chrome at all.

> Friendly reminder that EVERY REQUEST you make with it enabled, will be passed through Google its filters.

Perhaps you should actually fact-check such assumptions before passing them along as "friendly reminders"?

That's not true. Safe browsing checks are done locally.

pearjuice, this simply isn't true. The way that Chrome does this is periodically downloads a file from Google. The file consists of hashes of known-dangerous web pages. When you visit a new URL, the URL is hashed locally and checked against the client-side list of hashes of known-bad pages. If there's no match, Chrome proceeds normally. Only if there is a hash collision does Chrome do more checking to see if the URL is safe.

Here's more information in case you want to read more: https://code.google.com/p/google-safe-browsing/wiki/SafeBrow...

It still holds regarding all the other Google activities in Chrome.

I've stopped using chrome for general browsing since this latest scandal.

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