Google and Malware detection?

A most curious thing. A friend had asked me recently about what web cam to get so I thought I'd do a quick search for logitech. Going to google and putting that in got back a variety of responses. But what was interesting was that anything that had the word "logitech" in it (that wasn't video) was targetted as a harmful site with the words: "This site may harm your computer." A twitter buddy posted the following picture with the same issue on a different search: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cameronreilly/3240636217/

Thing is EVERY site was listed as this, including Logitech's own site. :confused:

Anyone else seeing this?

ETA: http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=5779

Appears it's Google-wide. Someone broked the internetz.

*Claps hands and laughs*

Read the thread below yours.

This is wonderfull. Without google we'll revert back to what the internet was in the 1990s. Poorly designed webpages... oh and meta search engines.

PEOPLE using the internet search page Google were stunned to see erroneous messages reporting that every site turned up in their results might be harmful.

Google blamed the problem, which occurred between 1:30am and 2:25am last night, on human error and apologised to users and site owners whose pages were incorrectly labelled, AP reported.

"Anyone who did a Google search during that time likely saw the message 'This site may harm your computer'' accompanying every search result, the company said on its blog.

Google said the message is regularly used to flag sites known to install malicious software in the background or surreptitiously to protect users. The list of sites is provided by StopBadware.org, a non-profit project headed by legal scholars at Harvard and Oxford universities who research consumer complaints.

Last night's error occurred after the latest update to the list was checked erroneously in such a way that the warning would apply to all URLs, the company said in a statement.

The glitch was caught by on-call staff and the file was quickly fixed, Google said.

"We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in to prevent it from happening again,'' said Marissa Mayer, vice-president of search products and user experience, in the statement.

January 20th, 2009, 07:32 AM #8
The-Spec
Senior Member


StopBadware.org's database seems like it would be fun to play around with too. Imagine perfectly normal sites' results coming back with unwarranted warnings near their links.

Hey Spec nice prediction of the future...hehehe

http://feedfunk.spreadshirt.net/en/S...le-Bug-8519340