scriptygoddess

08 Dec, 2007

Google labels Scriptygodess as pariah

Posted by: Jennifer In: Announcements

A note to anyone brave enough to come here from Google: Scriptygoddess never has (and never will) distribute malware. I honestly have no idea where they got that idea from, unless this is their retribution for me pissing about their business practices previously.

All paid links have been removed from this site for some time now. The only ad on this site besides Google's own adsense (which I make crap from by the way and will now probably just remove entirely) (Google's ads have now been removed. If I'm not making money on this site, then neither will they) is an ad for the hosting company I personally use and have been recommending to people because I think they're a good hosting company. (HostICan (now called "HostISuck" in my house) ad has been removed. I'll probably make a post on them too soon) I have NEVER distributed malware. Never. Not once. So where they got that idea from is completely fabricated and a total lie.

You should know that I make NO money off this site now. It is purely a public service and information personal storage house.

I have asked for a reconsideration from Google, and they say that may take some time. (as in several weeks) Heh. I would greatly appreciate anyone's/everyone's help in this matter. Please make a post on your site that Scriptygoddess is alive and well and DOES NOT DISTRIBUTE MALWARE, despite the lie that Google tells.

update: So after further investigation, it seems my site had been hacked and in such a way that made it hard for me to even notice. A hacker was able to add a line of code to one of my template files and from the way it was written it seemed it wouldn't even have shown up in the html unless you were specifically coming from Google. Google is supposedly in a war against spammers and hackers, and in their fight I guess they don't mind punishing some victims as well. (How noble of them.) =puke=

The strange thing is that I am running the latest version of WordPress, I am (obviously) not even using a customized template, I am using VERY FEW plugins… so now I'm left wondering what the deal is with WordPress – or the few plugins I have running, that would allow the hack to go through. I've been searching around online to try and find more information, but I'm not getting anything back specific. (What I HAVE seen on the forums seems like a lot of defensiveness to me. People saying they have some kind of XSS hack on their site, and then other people trying to put the blame elsewhere) I've sent a few emails to a few WordPress people – but haven't heard back. This is distressing to say the least. I love WordPress, but if it means having my site get hacked without my even knowing it and then getting banned and labeled by Google as a malware distributor… I don't know…

Update: 12/18/07 – FINALLY! Google has lifted the "malware" curse on Scriptygoddess. Guess that was my belated Hanukkah present. Good thing too – because I've been very busy the last few weeks – have a post due probably after the holidays about a cool site I did using WordPress – all kinds of custom templates for posts and pages, and basically stretching WordPress's CMS ability. As well – I did a very cool site using CubeCart and I have a few things I learned from that experience to post about. Stay tuned…

(oh, also, – seems I got a PR push as well – from a 3 to a 5. Of course, I used to sit comfortably at a PR6 – but I'll take what I can get. LOL!)

22 Responses to "Google labels Scriptygodess as pariah"

1 | Sunny

December 8th, 2007 at 12:18 pm

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Sad that they don't take false positives more seriously…

2 | marlyse.com » Google labels Scriptygodess as pariah

December 8th, 2007 at 10:09 pm

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[…] be allowed, anyhow not with substantial proof of it's truth. — (Via scriptygoddess ยป Google labels Scriptygodess as pariah). filed under : asides – code | created late at night – it was 11:09 pm to be exact | trackback […]

3 | Paul

December 9th, 2007 at 1:29 am

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I got that warning from Google. How bizarre. Where in the world did that come from? I've accidentally clicked on search results that almost certainly distributed malware and have never seen that warning.

Fortunately I have been to your site dozens of times in the past, since you often have solutions for problems I am having, so I knew you were safe. And I'm on a Mac, so there is little "malware" I could encounter simply by visiting your site.

It sounds pretty libelous to me. I'm surprised they can pull such a stunt. I'd rather get a message warning me of the offensive material I'm often assaulted with when clicking a link Google serves me.

4 | Jill

December 9th, 2007 at 4:54 pm

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That is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in a long time. I have always loved this site and will most certainly make a post about this. I'm sorry you are dealing with this nonsense. :(

5 | No Malware at ScriptyGoddess | Chimommy

December 9th, 2007 at 5:02 pm

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[…] you know that the site is back up and running? Alive and well. Anyway, there has recently been a problem regarding Google. If you search for ScriptyGoddess and click on the link through Google, Google comes back and tells […]

6 | Sapphire

December 10th, 2007 at 10:56 am

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That's just screwy. I hope they take care of it soon.

Mark at 45n5 had a similar problem recently.

http://www.45n5.com/permalink/how-one-line-of-code-can-destroy-your-online-busin.html

7 | Jennifer

December 10th, 2007 at 1:14 pm

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Yes, I think that may have been what the problem was (nice if I had known about it and or been alerted to the problem aside from finding out this way) But Google (web-police, judge and jury all rolled into one) just takes your site down off their results (easily) and then you have to beg and plead to have them let your site show up again. Again, if there is something on my site that someone is looking for, you'll be hardpressed to find it thanks to Google. Or rather, you may find it – but Google will tell you not to come here lest my site will hunt you down and drive over your cat. Several times.

I will say this. I love WordPress… but this is clearly a WordPress issue. I've been looking around on the forums for information about cross-site scripting and/or HTML insertion – and I see a lot of defensiveness about the issue. I'm sure that some of the more recent updates are results of security hole fixes… and while I'm willing to update every time they come out with a new fix… I'm still becoming uncomfortable. WordPress needs to fix this issue. (and make it so it doesn't happen so easily again) FAST.

8 | Chipping the web - triperfect -- Chip’s Quips

December 11th, 2007 at 12:48 pm

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[…] You don't want to get on Google's bad list. […]

9 | Mikrowelle » Do no evil

December 13th, 2007 at 6:36 am

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[…] my fingertips" zu haben und auch scriptygoddess seit diesem Monat wieder bloggt, hat mich ihr aktueller Eintrag doch ein wenig… verwundert? verstoert? erschreckt? Ich weiss nicht, wie ich es formulieren […]

10 | ^Lestat

December 13th, 2007 at 8:57 am

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Sorry to hear of this trouble Scripty. I've come across definate malware links myself. Frankly, I couldn't find the way to report them.

I hope my template stays unhacked. I Love your content so it's good to see you wordpressing on ๐Ÿ˜‰

11 | Adam Messinger

December 15th, 2007 at 3:05 am

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What a nightmare. Google claims that malware blacklisting can be protested through their Webmaster Tools. You can also request a review of your site from this form on StopBadware.org. I hope you get this resolved quickly; you've provided nothing but useful content here for years.

12 | Jennifer

December 15th, 2007 at 7:49 am

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I had already asked Google to review (they're.. uh… "working on it". Right.) but hadn't been able to figure out stopbadware's site enough to be 100% sure I was on the right form to request a review (not report a site that had badware). (Too bad Google doesn't ban sites with poor usability!) In any case, I've filled out their form as well…

13 | Jennifer

December 17th, 2007 at 9:51 am

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Yuck! Hope it gets straightened out soon!

14 | Richy C.

December 17th, 2007 at 4:42 pm

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If you actually sign up for Google's Webmaster control panel via http://www.google.com/webmasters they are supposed to send you alerts if they detect Malware on your page and provide you with details of where it can be found. I've not experienced this myself so I can't say if it does or doesn't work, but I'm "aware" of the feature there.

15 | Jennifer

December 17th, 2007 at 4:49 pm

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I had been signed up, but apparently never bothered to do the additional "verify you're the site owner" thing. So while they did have my email address and I did have an account with them, and I did add scriptygoddess to the webmaster tools thing – maybe it was that last step of verifying that I was the site owner that makes the difference? Not sure.. That would have been nice though if they do update you from that…

16 | Joe

December 19th, 2007 at 7:25 pm

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OUCH!!! Glad to see your still alive. I used to read your blog often but I kind of fell out to the blogosphere. Well, hoping to pop back in. Anyway, will be reading you again. Take care!!

17 | Liana Leahy

December 20th, 2007 at 12:45 pm

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Jennifer,

I just happen to be from StopBadware and I came across your site while surfing for help on a SQL query. I like your site (and am always happy to find fellow female geeks) so I'm glad that your site has been cleared.

Many many sites that Google flags are innocent sites that have been hacked. I'd love to hear what you find out in regards to WordPress. Another source of badware can be third party advertisements which are hard to track down.

Still, I've alerted our communications leader about your site to answer any remaining questions you may have.

Cheers,
Liana

18 | Erica George

December 20th, 2007 at 2:19 pm

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Hi Jennifer,

I'm the communications lead at stopBadware.org – my colleague Liana pointed me to your

post. I hope I can help clear up a few misconceptions about the warnings and answer any

questions you still may have. I'm also sorry to hear that you found our review form

difficult to use. If you have any specific feedback about that page I'd love to hear it

– we're in the process of a website redesign so we're actively seeking that kind of

suggestions.

As Liana said, the vast majority of the sites Google flags are ordinary sites that were compromised due to hacks, ads, etc. I have no idea if this is what caused the issue on your site, but a recent post here talks about a WordPress SQL vulnerability.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please let me know. Since your review was processed by Google rather than StopBadware I don't have access to specifics about your site, but I can answer questions about process, etc.

Also, you / your readers may be interested in the Security Tips for webmasters we've developed: http://stopbadware.org/home/security

Erica
StopBadware staff

19 | Sean

January 6th, 2008 at 11:22 am

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Are you sure the HTML injection was a wordpress issue? Is it possible that your FTP or web-based file manager was compromised? I haven't read deeply into what you've said about your issue — what made you jump to a wordpress vulnerability?

Thanks!
Sean

20 | Jennifer

January 6th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

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Yes, it could be a number of different things. But out of all the possibilities, WordPress is the one that I have the least amount of confidence in security wise – especially given some of it's recent history. The other possibilities I just highly doubt given my setup, but since I have no proof of how the hack happened, technically it could be anything. (Including gnomes hacking into my computer and instead of getting at my bank account, they go and corrupt one of my blog template files. Hey, it could happen!) ;P But in the end, any suggestions that had been made to make things more secure were already in place, and no one has offered more than that to help figure out how it happened and/or how to prevent it from happening again.

21 | valerie

January 18th, 2008 at 2:29 pm

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I haven't been here in a while — I'm glad you got it fixed! And yay for the push back to PR5. I'm still down two points myself, blah.

22 | Martin

March 17th, 2008 at 4:39 am

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Hi, i find myself in the same situation and i don't know if I should blame it on my web hosting service – but they say they don't have such a problem or on wordpress and its security flaws, or on a possible hack or on a bad link. How did you resolve the issue?

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  • Scott: Just moved changed the site URL as WP's installed in a subfolder. Cookie clearance worked for me. Thanks!
  • Stephen Lareau: Hi great blog thanks. Just thought I would add that it helps to put target = like this:1-800-555-1212 and
  • Cord Blomquist: Jennifer, you may want to check out tp2wp.com, a new service my company just launched that converts TypePad and Movable Type export files into WordPre

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