Ajit Gaddam: TechNews and Security

I heard about them before that sometime in late January of this year, Google has been tagging certain sites in search results with a Malware warning saying “This site may harm your computer”. These are sites which Google has indentified as sites with some malcode on the server hosting the site or some WMF exploit present in the code of the site.

According to Google they are doing this as they want their users to feel safer when they search the web and that Google is always working to identify such dangerous sites and provide increased protection for their users. In case you decide to go ahead and click on the site which Google has flagged as hosting malware, you are taken to a page which looks something like below. You are given a warning “visiting this web site may harm your computer. You can learn more about harmful web content and how to protect your computer at StopBadware.org” You can then return to the previous page with the Google search results for your query or you can go ahead and continue to the site you wanted to visit. You are however not given a link to click to go to that site. You either have to copy and paste the URL to visit the site.

Malicious software is often installed without your knowledge or permission when you visit these sites. Some examples of malicious software include programs that delete data on your computer, steal personal information such as passwords and credit card numbers, or alter your search results. For more information on these types of sites, please visit http://www.stopbadware.org/home/help

If you’re concerned that malicious software may have been installed on your computer, please visit http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=8091 for information on removing it from your system.

Sometimes, webmasters have no idea that their site is hosting malcode. Matt Cutts of Google has posted an article about these Malware warnings in Google search results and how to appeal them to have your site removed or re-evaluated. He shows an example on how the site owners were hosting a WMF exploit that could infect any visitor coming to their site. It seems that whenever they check out a “we don’t have any malware” reports at this point, he is yet to see a false positive, where the sites in question have each had some malware on them

For information about reporting a website that may have violated Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, please visit http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=16162