Google Is Now Listing SourceForge as a Malicious Site

http://i.imgur.com/FAv6VdV.png

by irl_zebra • 11 years ago

235 53 11 years ago

i.imgur.com

davidgerard3• 11 years ago

Not happening for me when I go to that link from Google in Firefox. Can anyone else reproduce this?

edit: Now happening for me in Chromium. (Both of these on Xubuntu 14.04, versions from the repos.)

dantudor• 11 years ago

Yes happens for me in Chrome. Welcome news!

m3Lith• 11 years ago

Nope, can freely access the site on both latest versions of Chrome and Chromium. Though the project seems to have moved from that page already.

davidgerard3• 11 years ago

I got the warning in Chromium just now.

s_dev• 11 years ago

No warning for me either on Chrome Version 43.0.2357.124 (64-bit) on a Mac running Yosemite and I'm based in Dublin, Ireland.

I can reproduce it if I visit exactly: http://sourceforge.net/projects/camstudio/

but not http://sourceforge.net/ on it's own. Perhaps they only apply the warning to malicious projects rather than the site as a whole.

runarb• 11 years ago

Blocked for me when using Chrome Versjon 42.0.2311.90 on Windows 7.

dkns• 11 years ago

I'm guessing OP took this from reddit thread. If you read that thread you'll see that it's not sourceforge but this one project. So this title is misleading.

Edit: Thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3a9h9x/soureforg...

Response from one user that sourceforge is actually whitelisted by google: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3a9h9x/soureforg...

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

davidgerard3• 11 years ago

Looks like the malware-bearing projects need some reporting, then!

luso_brazilian• 11 years ago

Not really, if you see the Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page for sourceforge.net (emphasis mine) [1]:

> What is the current listing status for sourceforge.net?
> This site is >>>not currently listed as suspicious<<<.
> Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 333 time(s) over the past 90 days.
> What happened when Google visited this site?
> Of the 205785 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 588 page(s) resulted in >>>malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent<<<.
> The last time Google visited this site was on 2015-06-18, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on >>>2015-06-18<<<.
> Malicious software includes 5877 virus, 4347 trojan(s), 1132 exploit(s).

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

k_roy2• 11 years ago

UBlock is actually blocking all of SF

rumdz• 11 years ago

Which filter is blocking SF for you? UBlock is not blocking SF for me.

rawe• 11 years ago

The following page lists stats for sourceforge itself:

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

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 332 time(s) over the past 90 days.

csn• 11 years ago

I also find it fascinating what Google has to say about itself https://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=Google.com

_lce0• 11 years ago

[!] Youtube also downloads and installs malware

https://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=youtube.com

piyush_soni• 11 years ago

Very interesting! Of course Google itself is not hosting any malicious content, but they are acting as a bridge between the user and malicious content which they honestly write about. Interesting that they also include blogspot.com pages in that.

andor• 11 years ago

Counterexample: http://sourceforge.net/projects/lame/

smhenderson2• 11 years ago

I get a 404 when I try that link, as well as one from a cousin comment: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/

Wonder what's up with that?

arbitrage• 11 years ago

Both appear to work fine.

AndrewOMartin• 11 years ago

Interestingly (to me) this link is blocked by my ad blocker, rather than Google.

uBlock₀ has prevented the following page from loading: http://sourceforge.net/projects/lame/ Because of the following filter ||sourceforge.net^

X-Istence• 11 years ago

uBlock Origin added a filter to block all of Sourceforge...

longsleep• 11 years ago

U-Block origin is blocking SourceForge as well (||sourceforge.net^$other)

k-mcgrady• 11 years ago

I was just looking into U-Block. What's better to use: U-Block or U-Block Origin?

y0ghur7_xxx• 11 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9718625

tl;dr: uBlock Origin

Osaka• 11 years ago

AFAIK: U-Block Origin is a fork of U-Block which hopes to stay in sync with U-Block, but maintain a per-site block/allow feature which was removed from the newer version of U-Block.

anton_gogolev• 11 years ago

Where to move from SourceForge: [1]:

[1] http://helb.github.io/goodbye-sourceforge/

rbanffy• 11 years ago

The important thing (for retrogeeks like me) is that http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/ is not doing anything particularly evil.

joss82• 11 years ago

... that you can notice ;)

phkahler• 11 years ago

Let us keep SourceForge in mind as GitHub goes public.

api2• 11 years ago

GitHub has a paid business model, so I think they're less likely to be tempted by the dark side. SourceForge is another cautionary tale about how "free is a lie" -- how free leads directly to scummy business models.

Grue3• 11 years ago

GitHub has a paid business model, so I think they're less likely to be tempted by the dark side

So did Sourceforge. Github has competition in business space (Gitlab Enterprise, Stash) and if it falls out of favor with businesses, anything can happen.

solomatov• 11 years ago

I love google for this and many other ways the fight abuse of browser users. First, they removed CA, which produced a bad certificate, and now sf with their bundles.

derekp7• 11 years ago

I've seen a few differing reports on what SourceForge is doing. From what I gather so far:

1) Originally (a couple years back or so), they started (as an opt in from the project owners) bundling adware with the Windows versions of installers on selected projects.

2) Recently, SourceForge editors have taken over abandoned projects (i.e., projects that no longer use SourceForge as their primary distribution page, and haven't updated the project pages), and have replaced the installers for some of them with their adware-bundled installers.

3) A firestorm erupted over this, SF stated that they would back away from the adware (on taken-over pages -- it would still be present on projects with an agreement from the project owners).

4) They are still taking over abandoned projects and updating them.

Now my question -- for point (4), are they just updating the project download pages with the current versions, or are they still bundling their adware with the projects? Everything I've seen so far (after their "apology" post), it appears that they haven't done any new adware bundling, just taking over the projects. Is this the case? And if so, is the concern that they will slip in the adware in the future?

api2• 11 years ago

Because it is.

istvan__• 11 years ago

Damn machine learning software. :) Google needs to tune some of the parameters.

tzgur8• 11 years ago

People always complain about the power that countries hold. Tech superpowers hold a lot more, and yet nobody elects or really regulates them.

zevyoura• 11 years ago

Which "tech super power" has a military and nukes?

ra1n85• 11 years ago

Terrible analogy.

Tech superpowers cannot coerce me through (direct) regulation or force.

lectrick• 11 years ago

Oh how the mighty have fallen

Google Is Now Listing SourceForge as a Malicious Site

Related Stories