Carlos Miller
As Photography is Not a Crime is battling it out with a local sports blog over the top spot in the Sun Sentinel Best Overall Blog contest, the site that readers are being directed to in order to vote states that it was infected with malware.
This was at least the second time I’ve seen it happen this week.
As of 6:54 a.m. on Thursday, the problem appears to have been resolved. It’s back.
According to Google, this is the third time it’s happened in the past 90 days.
Malicious software includes 85 scripting exploit(s), 14 trojan(s).
Malicious software is hosted on 1 domain(s), including samuest.ru/.
This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS36476 (WEB).
Of the 250 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 90 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2010-02-25, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2010-02-25.
This is ridiculous considering I’ve been urging my readers to click over to that site so they can vote for me. When I recently clicked over there this morning, I received the message that is posted above in a screenshot.
Needless to say, I removed the last post where I was asking readers to click over there and vote for me.
As far as I’m concerned, the contest is already tainted. I wonder if this has anything to do with a certain blog – not The Phinsider which is currently in first place – that was receiving a high amount of votes although it appeared that it had no more than two regular readers.
The first time I saw it happen was on Tuesday. I sent an email to Chris Tiedje of the Sun-Sentinel and he said they were working on the problem. It was resolved that same morning. Or so I thought.
I sent him another email about it this morning.
If it happens when they are not manning the computers, then what can we expect this weekend during the last two days of voting?
According to Google, this malware has already affected five domains. Click below for more info.
Popularity: 2% [?]
17 responses so far ↓
1 MacK // Feb 25, 2010 at 7:49 AM
I guess they are right when they say Linux is free, not only in cost!
2 Tom // Feb 25, 2010 at 8:17 AM
The top two vulnerabilities are SQL injection and Cross Site Scripting, as the Sun-Sentinel has just learned. Part of the problem is that not all of the testing tools check all of the vulnerabilities, so you have to run all of the tools (many of which cost money). Interestingly, the main sun-sentinel site seems to be unaffected.
@macK: I don’t understand your remark, are you referring to servers or clients?
3 PhinsTifosi // Feb 25, 2010 at 8:22 AM
The Phinsider has 3,000 members and a significant number of regular posters and commentors. It is, as far as I can see, extremely active as well as interactive! I find it incredibly informative as well as a lot of fun. I have been a member for almost a year.
Do not knock any other blogs, because I would never have found PINC, but for The Phinsider.
Most blogs are nothing more than the opinions of one person, which makes them rather boring.
PINC seems to do a good service, but I do not see much action (or even reaction) other than you defending your legal issues.
4 Sun Sentinel // Feb 25, 2010 at 10:28 AM
You are correct that our server at sun-sentinel2.com was hit by a malware virus. However, the attack was successfully fought off and the viruses removed. The messages you are seeing are due to virus protection softwares flagging our attacked server. The voting page was moved to a different server and has been clean since the initial attack. The voting has not been affected. Keep voting at http://SunSentinel.com/bob, and good luck to all.
5 Carlos Miller // Feb 25, 2010 at 11:00 AM
I wasn’t knocking the blog. I was just trash-talking.
I respectfully pointed out that it averaged more than 100 comments a post, which none of the other blogs in the running seem to do.
6 Carlos Miller // Feb 25, 2010 at 11:01 AM
I wasn’t knocking the blog. I was just trash-talking for run.
I respectfully pointed out that it averaged more than 100 comments a post, which none of the other blogs in the running seem to do.
7 MacK // Feb 25, 2010 at 12:18 PM
I was referring to the client side of Linux.
A virus or trojan can certainly reside on any OS server to infect clients of a different OS.
The sad part is if the “most popular was not free”, we would see a lot less of such shenanigans.
8 Karen // Feb 25, 2010 at 12:45 PM
Good luck. But the Pure Pilates Blog is racing to the top! Malware or no Malware!!
Karen´s last blog ..2010 Romana’s Pilates Conference
9 gvstn // Feb 25, 2010 at 1:09 PM
Hi,
Just a heads up–your voting links on the upper right of your page still point to the sun-sentinel2 server(bad one). You should change the links to the newer ones.
10 gvstn // Feb 25, 2010 at 1:44 PM
Sorry, make that the voting links on the upper-left.
11 Sun Sentinel // Feb 25, 2010 at 1:46 PM
or the upper left…
12 PhinsTifosi // Feb 25, 2010 at 7:19 PM
Yes, the Phinsider does average more than 100 comments per post. We even had one that got up to 2800 comments before Matty cut it down to over 1600. (A bunch of us were trying for the SBN record!)
ps – many of us at Phinsider are also stout fans of The U. (It IS all about The U!).
I was just saying, don’t dis another blog; (well any blog about the Jest (Jets) is quite okay to dis; you never know where your new readers will come from!
13 genewitch // Feb 26, 2010 at 12:13 AM
That’s great except you can’t vote for the best blog anymore, just the other categories.
Carlos, according to my last pageview, you’re NUMBER ONE MAN CONGRATULATIONS!
14 Fascist Nation // Feb 26, 2010 at 3:11 PM
Of course when you run google safe browsing check on er, well, google.com it too returns a report similar to Sun-Sentinel
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=google.com
I was pleased to see my site was clean — this despite the fact we had a security certificate error between our primary and secondary server that got us blocked by many ISPs for almost a day Monday until our IT figured out where the discrepancy was and corrected it.
15 Jake // Feb 27, 2010 at 1:54 AM
Hey Carlos,
I just wanted to say hello.
I am a lawyer practicing in Upstate NY. I’m also an occasional DU lurker, and I stumbled across your thread in the General Discussion section of the site.
I surfed around this site a bit and found a link to your blog post where you uploaded the PDF copies of your brief in the prior case, the assistant state attorney’s response, and your reply brief. I read all of them with interest. I commenced reading your initial brief yesterday, and I was stunned by how well written it was. Most pro se briefs contain error after error but yours was excellent.
I then read the reply brief of the assistant state attorney, Ignacio Vazquez, and his brief contained errors that I would have expected from a pro se applicant: terrible grammar, poor/incorrect cites, and a general trend of laziness and outright plagiarism in some cases.
Is this the caliber of state attorneys you have down there? I don’t have to worry about being sued by Ignacio, because he’s a public failure, first of all, so I’ll say my true thoughts on the matter.
1) How did this guy every graduate from law school?
2) After graduating from law school, how did he pass the bar exam? Is Florida’s exam that much easier to pass than New York’s? I didn’t think so.
3) How did he get his current job as an assistant state’s attorney? Maybe family connections? I’m just stunned by how terrible his reply brief really was. I actually passed it around to colleagues today and we all had a great laugh over it at Mr. Vasquez’s expense. It looks like a brief that was written by an aspiring law student, not a practicing attorney. I especially love his perplexing use of capital letters with regard to the coined phrase “WebPages.” This guy LOOOOVES the capital letters. I’m seriously enamored with him simply because he feels the need to capitalize phrases like “Trial Court” every chance he gets.
4) Do you think the fact that the reply brief from the state attorney’s office was so shoddily written contributed to the appellate court’s decision to reverse the conviction and remand it for a new trial with a new presiding judge?
I wish you the best of luck in your present case (because I read on the DU thread that you’re also dealing with a second case at the moment).
16 Jake // Feb 27, 2010 at 1:55 AM
I just need to make one correction to my above post:
I meant to refer to Mr. Vazquez as a “public figure”, not a “public failure.” Perhaps this was a Freudian slip on my part?
Regards.
17 Jake // Feb 27, 2010 at 2:06 AM
Sorry, I can’t stay away-last comment for now I promise.
I love how Mr. Vazquez has the cohones to actually use a “see e.g.” citation following a claim that something is well-settled. If it’s so well-settled, Mr. Vazquez, why couldn’t you find a direct quote? Bam.
Okay, I’m done needling Mr. Vazquez and his limited intellectual capacity. For now.
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