whitepages.com problem??

[Lee]

Just went to whitepages.com.au to get a number - the site starting throwing up malware warning dialogs etc and windows-esque security warnings, then tried to download an executable to me upon hitting cancel.... I'm on OSX so scoff at such things - but others may want to be careful.... never seen that before.

[GTB_an_Owl (Geoff)]

didn't happen for me just now ??

geoff

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Wow - that's seriously screwed up. I just looked at it with Firefox running on Linux, so the malware was ineffective, but jeez - what a doozy. I'd say that there are some IT managers at Sensis who are pretty nervous about their jobs this morning....

[Danielle@Sensis]

Hi there – I wanted to provide a quick update on the issue we’ve had with an online advertisement running on our network of sites.

Today we acted swiftly last week to remove a sabotaged banner advertisement that was running on our popular sites such as yellow.com.au, whitepages.com.au, whereis.com, as well as Telstra's BigPond portal.

We were notified on Tuesday morning that a banner advertisement for US travel website skyauction.com, had been sabotaged with malicious code to lure users to download a free malware protection program. Once downloaded, the program then installs spyware on a users PC.

As an immediate step, we removed the advertisement from our MediaSmart ad network and then followed up with further work to ensure the original ad was not accessible anywhere online.

On behalf of Sensis, I’d like to apologise for any inconvenience this caused. As a leading online content and advertising business, we treat online security with the utmost importance and we are absolutely committed to doing all we can to prevent this type of thing occurring again.

For anyone concerned they may have been exposed to any type of malicious code, we suggest running a scan of your computer files using an up-to-date anti-virus program.

And of course the best protection when online is to ensure you are running an up-to-date operating system on your PC, with all the latest upgrades and security patches available from your software provider, as well as running the latest anti-virus and spyware protection programs from reputable providers.

We recommend you also take care when downloading programs to ensure you know exactly what the program and is and who is providing it to you.

One last thing - we’d like to thank Sandi Hardmeier from http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/ for quickly alerting Sensis to this issue.

Regards

Danielle Horan
Sensis

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Wow

Danielle - JOOI how did you hear about it being discussed here?

Glad to see you've fixed it.

Cheers
Chris

[erick (Eric)]

Originally Posted by Omaroo

Wow.........how did you hear about it being discussed here?

Someone is watching us!

[h0ughy (David)]

Just goes to show you mike - who does actually read IIS?????

[mlcolbert]

houghy, I'm waiting for the movie...... the series......the dance competition...ad nauseum. now, who's going to play iceman,......?




michael

[iceman (Mike)]

I reckon it would be an easy google search to find who was talking about whitepages + security + warning + download. I'm sure she found it that way and joined up to explain what happened.

You'll probably find the same explanation on other forums/sites.

In any case, welcome danielle! Do you enjoy looking at the sky?

[Lee]

The ads on that page are a nuisance - half the slowness in using it is waiting while it loads the damn things.....

Originally Posted by Danielle@Sensis

And of course the best protection when online is to ensure you are running an up-to-date operating system

Is she talking about Windows?

[leon]

Gee, I certainly must be a late comer to the computer world and wish I knew what you were talking about.

I don't need a response here, but thought I might share that with you.

Leon