Malware Warnings – How secure is your site ?

We just had an issue with a site that got the infamous “Google Malware Warning”, so we did some investigating and found out that this is a big issue at the moment – another large site we knew of has had the same problem (this week) and even the BBC Radio 3 site has had the same thing (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/09/google_radio3_malware_warning/.

We narrowed it down to old software running on a disused adserver and it seems that adservers are the main cause of this. We checked our server integrity and found all was okay, no hacks or issues there, the problem lay in a hole in the adserver software.

This was an old piece of software we just weren’t using any more and so we turned it off and all was okay, BUT this goes to show the importance of patching your software as soon as new versions are released – the loss of business caused by having this big red warning on your site is almost unimaginable.

Safari gives a warning , that the site may harm your computer whilst Firefox warns of the site being an “Attack Site” – how long would you hang around if you saw that ??

We’re constantly patching and updating our client sites so make sure you’re working with a web design agency who knows the importance of this. Your business is just too important to not be concerned.