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Malware Concerns At Newsarama Addressed

Published Thu, 01 Apr 2010 09:50:51 -0500

Last updated Thu, 01 Apr 2010 09:59:28 -0500

Over the past few months, there have been a number of concerns from users visiting the long-standing Newsarama site that their browsers have been warning them of virus attacks. But in the last few hours this appears to have become a common problem.

Warnings such as the following have been forwarded to Bleeding Cool.

What is the current listing status for www.newsarama.com?

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

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 1 time(s) over the past 90 days.

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 92 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 3 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2010-04-01, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2010-03-31.

This site was hosted on 2 network(s) including AS6315 (XMISSION), AS4136 (QUALITYTECH).

When approached for comment, Mike Doran or Newsarama replied;

Newsarama.com is now and has always been clean of viruses and/or malware. The site has been thoroughly scanned and continues to be scanned several times a day to assure that's the case.

The problem is coming from an ad served by a third-party ad network that the Google scan bots detected. The ad could be only one or just a few out of the millions of ads Newsarama serves daily.

TechMediaNetwork (Newsarama's parent company) is currently working with Google to clear our status as a "safe" site and identity the offending ad and network (TechMediaNetwork uses several).

We apologize for the inconvenience and are working hard to resolve this problem once and for all.

Looks like the Malware MalWars will have to be put on hold for now…

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