CPod Blog is "Reported Attack Page"!

Tal
 August 14, 2010 at 11:12 AM posted in General Discussion

Just clicked the link to the blog on the front page and this is what I saw next:

What gives?

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xiaophil
 August 26, 2010 at 11:31 PM

Warning: it's back! Malware detected again, at least in Chrome.  Firefox doesn't give the warning.  The scary thing is that Chrome will not let me see the dashboard, i.e. not just the blog tucked away in a corner on the website.  This is the message:

Warning: Visiting this site may harm your computer!
The website at chinesepod.com contains elements from the site content.praxislanguage.com, which appears to host malware – software that can hurt your computer or otherwise operate without your consent. Just visiting a site that contains malware can infect your computer.
For detailed information about the problems with these elements, visit the Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page for content.praxislanguage.com.
Learn more about how to protect yourself from harmful software online.
  

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johnb
 August 27, 2010 at 01:57 AM

Hi xiaophil,

Thanks for the head's up. It seems that someone is attacking our Media Temple-based supporting services (including content.praxislanguage.com), causing the malware warning. We thought the issue was limited to the sites we fixed earlier, but it seems that it wasn't. This time, unfortunately, the affected site is used to provide content to the main site, which is causing the warning to come up on ChinesePod itself. We're moving the affected sites off of Media Temple as quickly as possible, and once we do that we'll ping Google and tell them to rescan our sites and certify that there are no issues, at which point the warning should go away.

Very sorry for the inconvenience, and we hope to get you back to your studies ASAP.

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suxiaoya
 August 18, 2010 at 08:53 AM

FYI: Blog is now back up and running, so you should be able to access it without any problems. Please let me know if you do find there are lingering issues.

Thanks!

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xiaophil
 August 16, 2010 at 12:41 AM

First, my disclaimers.  I love the community, I love the help the staff has given me and most of all, I love the podcasts.  Really, i do.  I can't say this enough times.  

But okay, I have to ask it...

When will this site get back to a normal state?  When???

Ever since New Year's, the actual website has been deteriorating in some form or another, and now it has reached a disturbingly low point.  At first it was just improvements that could have been better (threading), and then it was improvements that may or may have not actually improved anything but dragged the website down into the gutter for a long period of time from which it never recovered (the dashboard), and then there were lots of little improvements that didn't seem to be wanted by anybody (e.g. taking away most of the features on the toolbar for making comments... which are now back), and after that, strange problems start arising (such as clicking on a comment on the community page and being directed to the wrong page... or heck, just see the technical problems on site group to see how many problems there are) and now finally, the main server is down, we are left with this janky slow system, and we are being attacked by some sort of whatnot or another, which rightfully should disturb us, and for some reason isn't getting the imediate response that it should.

If CPod keeps going on this way, the first second there is a serious competitor, it will go down Kaien style.  Just saying.

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Tal
 August 16, 2010 at 10:10 AM

Thanks so much for acknowledging our concerns Sarah! Keep on keepin' on!

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suxiaoya
 August 16, 2010 at 03:47 AM

Hi Xiaophil and RJBerki -

The problems that have arisen within the past few days have been addressed in Hank's post here: http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/10057

We are working hard to resolve the technical issues and all related problems that affect our users. Thank you for your understanding.

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RJ
 August 16, 2010 at 01:32 AM

I have to agree first with Phil on all counts, and with Tal. What form of emergency would actually get cpod to work people on the weekend? A complete crash would probably have to wait until monday. Have you not heard of overtime or giving someone Monday and tuesday off? You really have to try hard to be as unprofessional as you are. I suggest you read xiaophil's note twice, slowly. John, Hank, Jenny, Cathereine, is anybody out there? Does anybody even care anymore?

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Tal
 August 16, 2010 at 01:03 AM

Sorry, for the double post, seems to be no way to edit or delete. Oh and I made both of those posts less than a minute ago, not "7 hours".

How about this CPod: why don't you fire every single member of your IT staff and bring in fresh blood top to bottom, 'cos the guys you've got now just have to be yanking your chain bigtime.

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Tal
 August 16, 2010 at 12:59 AM

You said it, bro. Hear, hear.

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Tal
 August 16, 2010 at 12:59 AM

You said it, bro. Hear, hear.

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frognotinawell
 August 15, 2010 at 02:23 PM

forum.chinesepod.com is also reported as harmful by Google.

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matthiask
 August 15, 2010 at 10:51 AM

indeed, there is a trojan javascript on the blog page.

 

JasonSch: Peter said, that there was a hardware problem with the servers, thus we are seeing now the backup server (without avatars)

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JasonSch
 August 14, 2010 at 06:15 AM

I wonder if this is related to the lack of avatar bug issue? I'd recommend trusting your browser on this one. I'm getting the same warning. Hopefully Peter can get everything in order first thing on Monday morning.