Google blocks Twitpic over alleged malware

http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/12/30/google-blocks-twitpic-over-alleged-malware-causing-chrome-to-deny-access-to-some-twitter-pages/

by derpenxyne • 14 years ago

37 53 14 years ago

thenextweb.com

thehodge• 14 years ago

I cannot even load tweetdeck at the moment as it seems to preload the images on the links thus showing the big red screen

Zirro2• 14 years ago

This is showing up in Firefox as well, since it uses "Google Safe Browsing" for information about suspicious sites.

jdangu• 14 years ago

Looks like yet another "malvertising" situation.

The Google Safebrowsing report [1] appears fairly ambiguous though:

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

"Of the 12029 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 2012-12-30, and suspicious content was never found on this site within the past 90 days."

[1] http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnost...

null_ptr• 14 years ago

> Looks like yet another "malvertising" situation.

And that's all the same to end users. When will the web evolve past these pests?

frostmatthew2• 14 years ago

They're working on it http://www.adsintegrityalliance.org/ :-)

kngl• 14 years ago

I'm happy to use a third party client to browse twitter...

jeffjose• 14 years ago

While this gets you over this minor inconvenience , is it really worth the risk of exposure to malwares?

kylemaxwell• 14 years ago

You're presuming right now that the detection is accurate and that, if it is, third-party Twitter clients would be susceptible to the same vectors.

You have an exposure risk every time you use the Web; managing that risk is part of what we do as users (and, to a greater degree, as professionals).

twapi• 14 years ago

even Firefox now warns its users http://browserfame.com/1049/chrome-twitpic-malware-warning

Zirro2• 14 years ago

That's because both Firefox and Chrome use the same source of information about potentially dangerous sites. It doesn't make Twitpic.com more suspicious.

stevencorona• 14 years ago

I posted this in another related submission-

We're trying to sort it out but there isn't really any information provided by Google/Chrome to go on. The best "details" they have show that Twitpic has 0 pages with Malware.

Crazy how some automated process at Google can kill an entire site just like that.

driverdan• 14 years ago

I believe you can appeal the block through Webmaster Tools but I'm not sure how quickly they fix it. Hopefully someone at Google sees this post and fixes it.

citricsquid• 14 years ago

This happened to us (granted we actually did have an infected advert network...) and once the adverts were fixed requesting a review via webmaster tools resolved it:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...

arashf• 14 years ago

this is arash from dropbox. a similar thing happened to us a couple years ago and mattcutts helped resolve it pretty quickly (https://twitter.com/mattcutts). I would try to reach out to him ASAP.

edit: ack. just read his twitter feed and it looks like he's out for a week.

tonfa2• 14 years ago

Looks like the safebrowsing console is lagging. It currently says "Updated 5 hours ago". I guess once the information propagates to it, you'll have more details.

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

tonfa2• 14 years ago

And indeed it now shows:

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 12592 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 31 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2012-12-31, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2012-12-30. Malicious software includes 13 trojan(s), 4 exploit(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 8 new process(es) on the target machine.

Malicious software is hosted on 5 domain(s), including mpchester.info/, malatyuhr.com/, iloveeu.info/.

2 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including 2upmedia.com/, adexcite.com/.

This site was hosted on 3 network(s) including AS36351 (SOFTLAYER), AS15169 (Google Internet Backbone), AS31815 (MEDIATEMPLE).

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

Over the past 90 days, twitpic.com appeared to function as an intermediary for the infection of 1 site(s) including ow.ly/.

jonknee3• 14 years ago

> Crazy how some automated process at Google can kill an entire site just like that.

Google bases its entire company around automated processes. Sites are made and killed by Google's automated processes every day. If you want to ask Google about it you will be talking to yet another automated process.

jamesaguilar• 14 years ago

Let's be realistic. Although this is the case for most sites, I doubt twitpic is going to end up talking to an automated process.

dumbfounder2• 14 years ago

Steve, how did you get reinstated so quickly? I am still having issues with Twicsy.

nacs• 14 years ago

I'm not sure this qualifies as news as this same thing has happened to other large sites from time to time.

What likely happened is that one of the 3rd party advertisers on Twitpic delivered ads that contain something classified as malware thus resulting in the entire Twitpic site getting blacklisted.

rickmb• 14 years ago

I wonder if Google's malware warnings have ever been reviewed by lawyers. Because this entire feature smells like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

ihsw• 14 years ago

You can opt out of it -- it's not mandatory.

jpdevereaux• 14 years ago

As a customer you could choose to opt out, but from a business standpoint it's not so easy.

magicalist3• 14 years ago

The closest analog would be antivirus software deciding your legitimate app was malware, but I can't find any lawsuits over that with some quick searching. Anyone remember one?

Punishing anti-malware software for false positives may feel like it could be warranted at times (at least in cases of anti-competitive actions or extreme incompetence), but it seems like it would set an extremely poor precedent. Even worse would be someone winning a case like "yes, there was malware, but you should have sent users though anyway."

Which kind of points to the reason why you probably won't see a case like this go far. Whether or not it's bad from the website's point of view, users chose to install a browser that blocks what it thinks are infected sites, and there's still the option (however small or hidden) to click through or disable the warning. There are also tools to figure out why you're blocked (I'm not sure about Microsoft or Opera's system, but I assume so), even if they can be annoyingly slow in internet time.

I don't think there's any more case than suing over a browser displaying a broken lock icon (or not loading a page at all) when you serve content over mixed secure and insecure connections, or warning that a self-signed certificate is untrusted and may be an attempt to hijack and redirect you.

rbarooah9• 14 years ago

Have you actually looked a twitter page that uses Twitpic? The text Chrome produces reads:

"Danger: Malware Ahead! Content from twitpic.com, a known malware distributor has been inserted into this page. Visiting this page now is very likely to infect your computer with malware.

Malware is malicious software that causes things like identity theft, financial loss, and permanent file deletion."

If this turns out to be a false positive, it certainly looks as though Google has committed a serious act of libel against a competitor by claiming that they are known to be malicious and involved in crime. Furthermore they prevented millions of customers from reaching another competitor (and partner of the first competitor) in order to deliver this message.

There's no mention of the possibility of there being a false positive, or how the conclusion was reached, or the general rate of false positives, or the fact that it's Google's opinion.

The fact that we assume it's an automated detection system doesn't absolve Google of responsibility for what they are communicating and the damage it can do to their competitors reputations.

If it does turn out to be a false positive, will Google contact all the people who saw that message to inform them that they were wrong?

I hope it's not a false positive.

tsunamifury• 14 years ago

It's not googles job to police the Internet. I, and many others, have been subjected to googles safe browsing malware flag without due cause. This is unacceptable and google overstepping its position.

I am beginning to hope that someone takes google to task and reigns in thier power over the Internet community. No company should have the ability to practically shut down websites at will.

magicalist3• 14 years ago

There's a reason Mozilla and Apple also use this service, and all the major browsers include something like it. Malware, injected malicious code (susceptible to XSS and social engineering attacks), and drive by downloads are a very real problem. You're going to have to suggest an alternative approach if you want to replace it.

frostmatthew2• 14 years ago

The warnings are just that, warnings. Any user is free to proceed to the site if they desire. Just like any user is free to NOT use a browser that uses Google's blacklist if they desire (Chrome, Safari, Firefox use it). Though FWIW Google's malware detection is extremely accurate, so it's generally best to simply avoid blacklisted sites until they have been cleaned up.

jonknee3• 14 years ago

I'd say by being the largest referrer on the internet and the developer of one of the most popular web browser, Google certainly has an excellent case to "police" the internet. If you don't want Google's advice, don't use Google's kit.

As a HN user you're most likely able to take care of yourself, but the vast majority of people are better off heeding Google's advice.

rbarooah9• 14 years ago

Google's "advice" in this case is a statement issued to millions of users accusing a competitor of a crime.

If it turns out to be true, that's fine. If it's not true, don't you think Google should be held responsible for the damage to their competitor's reputation?

mtgx• 14 years ago

I agree, because I was just upset when Microsoft started blocking some links in the Windows Live Messenger. However, in this case at least they still allow you the choice to visit the site, while Microsoft was simply blocking the links completely. And this is why I also disagree with the iOS and Metro not allowing for sideloading, too, while the Android/Mac OS X model is a much better compromise between security and liberty/flexibility.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

When I worked at Google I got to hear a number of "My friends site is being accused of hosting malware but I know these guys they don't do that!" and almost without exception, what had happened was that someone had compromised the web server, downloaded the images, re-compressed them with an image based exploit (sometimes changing them from gif to jpg in the process) and put them back on the site. To Grandma and her friends the site hadn't changed in years, except that now it was doing a drive by injection of malware.

I don't doubt for a minute that if someone figured out how to create a twitpic app that could inject malware into the images you shared, they would try really hard to get it on to your phone. How great a coup to have all eleventybillion followers check out your latest 'woah!' picture and spread the malware. Its a primo target.

I'm not defending Google here, I'm just saying that putting malware into images is a primary goal of any number of advanced persistent threat shops. Keep that in mind and make sure you keep an offline MD5 hash of every picture on your web site for validation.

rbarooah9• 14 years ago

If that's what's happening here, then the warning seems good for everyone.. except that the wording is defamatory.

Rather than accusing Twitpic of being "a known distributor of malware", it might be better if the message said something like "The site appears to be infected with malware. This warning will be remain in place until the malware has been removed."

packetslave• 14 years ago

The other big vector for tripping malware detection is 3rd party ad networks. When you have multiple parties outside your control that can inject arbitrary HTML and JavaScript into your page, all it takes is one bad advertiser.

Tichy• 14 years ago

It's their job to provide a good service to their users. Warning about malware seems to fit that bill.

adventured• 14 years ago

Speaking realistically, somebody will have the ability to practically shut down websites at will (or actually in this case alter optional access, as Google can't actually shut down TwitPic). Your only options are going to be private industry via Google (or equivalent) or your friendly homeland security officer (or equivalent).

One is an opt-in completely private non-coercive entity, the other uses a gun and has real power over you. Don't like Google, don't use their search or Chrome or Gmail et al., there are plenty of alternatives and your adoption of those would help spur further activity in the way of competition. Don't like homeland security? Tough luck, obey or go to jail.

4varb• 14 years ago

Interestingly, if you try to load any page with Twitpic content embedded you get the same warning.

Try to load the founder's page on Twitter: http://twitter.com/noaheverett

"Danger: Malware Ahead! Google Chrome has blocked access to this page on twitter.com. Content from twitpic.com, a known malware distributor, has been inserted into this web page."

dumbfounder2• 14 years ago

They blocked Twicsy today too, for using a pretty reputable ad network. It seems anti-competitive to me. Google knows it is an ad network that is causing the problems, they even pointed me to the supposedly malicious script. If they know that, they can just disable the ad network and send me a notice on Google Webmaster tools. They did neither, instead they block Twicsy for everyone and display a nasty message. It is ridiculous.

Google blocks Twitpic over alleged malware

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