[ExI] Request for help with malware "mystery"

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 3:18 PM, Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, google might have detected media that exploits certain
> misfeatures of IE - so the "may harm your computer" notice could be
> true if you have the exploitable browser and OS that a known vector is
> using.

My own brief investigation suggests this is possibly the case.  So: don't
use IE.  (Which you shouldn't be using anyway, if possible: IE
auto-downloads and installs all sorts of bad stuff without telling you.)

You might want to tell the site's owners to go to
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
to get the warning taken care of.  (Yeah, the cynical may view this as a
ploy to get people to use Google's tools.  Thing is, if that was the main
purpose, you'd see a lot more of it - and "using the tools" just means
free registration, and tiny bit of labor to confirm that you are the owner
of the site in question.)  Most likely, Google can give them more details
about why they're being listed as such.

It is possible that someone snuck malware onto their site without them
knowing (say, if they're running from a Windows server that got infected).
If so, Google will probably tell them exactly what and where (once they
have confirmed they are the site owners, and not - for example - the
original hacker trying to cover tracks), so they can remove it.