WoW Radio fighting claims of malware
by Mike Schramm 
Jul 11th 2008 at 3:00PM
A few readers (thanks!) have sent us news that visiting the website of our good friends at WoW Radio has caused their Firefox browser to flag that there's malware present over there. I visited the site last Sunday, and my browser tossed up error messages aplenty at me. But after talking with Totalbiscuit and Duncor, I'll repeat their message here, so just so everyone knows: there is no malware problem with WoW Radio.Totalbiscuit has posted a notice on their front page explaining what happened -- sometime last week, a hacker attempted to post some kind of malware nonsense on their forums, and was headed off at the pass. Unfortunately, Google just happened to catch one look at a possibly negative piece of code, and thus the site was flagged (strange that just one flag would cause the kinds of alerts that Firefox is spitting out, but that's a discussion for another day). But at this point, we know for certain that there is no malicious code on WoW Radio, and even Google admits that the one piece of code it saw was the fault of a third party, not the WoW Radio folks.
Both Totalbiscuit and Duncor tell me they're working with their ISP and Google as much as they can to get the warnings removed. But in the meantime, you've got nothing to worry about -- you can listen to our podcast (or any of the other podcasts over there) without worry.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, WoW Insider Business, News items, Forums, WoW Insider Show, Account Security
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
andy Jul 11th 2008 3:27PM
mmm...i think i'll still wait for the warnings to go away first...
TheSloth Jul 11th 2008 3:18PM
HAX!
pgdjiova Jul 11th 2008 3:51PM
im in ur radio, loggin ur keyz?
For Squirrels Jul 11th 2008 4:01PM
oh noes, it iz 4 2 laugh.
Michael Jul 11th 2008 4:11PM
This article confuses and frustrates me.
Directing traffic to a site that has been blacklisted for malware isn't a great idea. Even if you believe them. There are other avenues to resolve it, without recommending people disregard their AntiVirus and web browsers security measures.
TotalBiscuit Jul 12th 2008 11:22AM
Unfortunately no, there were no other ways to resolve it. The warning is google-generated, and the google malware filter is built into Firefox3. The only way to disable it client-side was to turn off the malware warning in Firefox, which defaults to on.
The warning message, when it was up, clearly stated that we were not actually hosting malware at all, only that there had been a third-party injection of possible malicious code, and didn't even say whether it was actually active.
It worries me greatly that Google can now effectively pass a death-sentence on whatever site they wish through this system. We lost a lot of traffic as a result of this warning and it took them a week to remove it. The fact that this could happen again, as a result of a mere forum hack that was fixed in minutes, scares the crap out of me to be honest. Consider what would have happened if WoW Insider had had the same issue.
DigitalMonitor Jul 11th 2008 4:12PM
Looks like Goolge has recrawled WC Radio and it is now reporting the site as clean.
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://www.wcradio.com/
Chuddy Jul 11th 2008 4:24PM
nah man, total biscuit is still there.
I KID I KID.
Eric Jul 11th 2008 4:39PM
A co-workers site was just subjected to the same thing. After extensive file and virus checking, it turned out to be sIFR code or files or something - something sifr-related (the Flash-based custom font embedding thing). Somethin' going around...
Duncor Jul 11th 2008 4:44PM
The warning is now gone from the site
Naix Jul 11th 2008 4:33PM
Yeah right. Only a keylogger would say its safe to go to that site.
Petre Jul 11th 2008 4:46PM
Well, the site DOES auto-download a file linking to their audio feed when you visit the site, which I found fairly invasive. All it did was open iTunes, but I really dislike it when sites download stuff without my asking.
PeeWee Jul 11th 2008 8:39PM
No one ever claimed that Wow-radio was a well-coded site. ^^
TotalBiscuit Jul 12th 2008 11:19AM
Haha yup you're right, we never claimed we had a good site :)
As the guys have said, Google have now recertified the site and the security issue that caused the warning has been closed.
The site doesn't actually autodownload a file at all. You're probably referring to the on-site player applet, which hooks up to your windows media player, realplayer or similar program. Perhaps it does do something when you've only got iTunes installed, who knows? We have a fully flash player in-beta that will soon allow you tune in without any external apps or downloads. We're looking forward to releasing that.