Saturday, November 10, 2007 8:35 AM
sandi
Haute Secure is blocking smh.com.au!
Oh, this is not good...
I go to www.news.com.au and I see this:
I go to www.smh.com.au and I see this:
Access to smh.com.au is completely blocked.
Clicking on the More Info link reveals:
I'm going to get in touch with the guys at Haute Secure and see if I can find out *why* this has happened. I assume it's because of the advertisements on the smh.com.au site. The fact that the site has not been scanned for threats since 15 October and is noted as last malicious on 18 June is a grave concern. My personal opinion is that too much time is being allowed to elapse before a site is rechecked, especially in a case like this where access to the site is being blocked.
Michael of hardwaregeeks.com tells me that he was advised by Haute Secure that they display warnings about a site for 6 months after an incident (Michael was hit by a malicious advertisement - hence the warning by Haute Secure).
We have just experienced an outbreak of malicious advertisements that affected some pretty big advertising networks - advertising networks that are used by sites all over the world. My concerns continue that HS is a great idea, but an idea that needs a lot of tweaking - if users are warned too often, if the warnings remain in place for too long after a situation is fixed, and if a site blocking remains in place for too long without checking, and for too longer after a problem has been cleaned up then 1) site owners are going to be seriously pissed off, and 2) people are going to stop using Haute Secure.
We need to find a better balance.
Filed under: Security, safety and privacy on the Internet, Vulnerabilities, viruses and exploits, Technology