Skin Horse

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Google Chrome Beta has a bug in it, apparently, that considers the javascript that syndicates the Skin Horse comic from WebComicsNation to be malware. This produces a warning when you visit the blogs here.

Unfortunately, the warning also goes out to Google's automated reporting system which has put WebComicsNation on several blacklists. Depending on how you have your settings set in other browsersi, you may not be seeing Skin Horse when you visit the blogs here.

Safari has chosen to ignore the Google blacklist until they get the bug in Chrome fixed, so Skin Horse does show up for most Safari users. Firefox is still using the Google blacklist or has got their own blacklist messed up because of second hand or third hand reporting problems and is presently blocking Skin Horse if you have "block attack sites" checked in security. Who knows what is happening with IE, but Skin Horse does show up for some people using IE.

Google will undoubtedly fix their problem and the blacklists will get untangled, probably this weekend but almost certainly by Tuesday. Until then, if you're getting warnings from Chrome, I'd suggest using Safari or Firefox. If Firefox is blocking Skin Horse, you can either uncheck the blacklist button in the security preferences (may not be a good idea) or you can use Safari or IE to look at Skin Horse.

Chrome has done this before, it's still in Beta and bugs happen. This is just a headsup for everyone out there so you know what is happening.

Hugs,
Erin

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True

erin's picture

Safari is being a bit smarter about it by using a different, more particular blacklist that does not ban all of WCN.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Thanks for the headsup

Hi Erin

Many thanks for your post. You saved me the effort of PMing you. Google Chrome is my preferred vehicle for accessing BCTS and most of the web. Over the past day or so, I had begun to notice the behaviour you describe, which is more annoying than anything else. Sometimes I just hate false positives.

Anyhow, I find that I'm able to choose to ignore the problem. It's just an annoyance, and hopefully as you say, it will be sorted quickly.

“I understand that visiting this site may harm my computer. Proceed anyway.”

Perturbed Sometimes

That's incorrect. I read

That's incorrect. I read through the warning from Google, and what I found was that it's NOT Skin Horse that triggered it off, or the syndication code. (I could be wrong, but that's not how it reads).

What it looks like is that webcomicsnation had an advertiser, or otherwise one of their hosted comics, with a malware loader on it. They didn't say exactly which site it was, however - just that it was one of 18 different sites hosted.


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

Google's story is one thing, WCN's another

erin's picture

If it were one of the advertisers or subsites, then Google should ban only the appropriate code, not blacklist a whole provider.

I myself banned one of BC's advertisers for bad code, it's not that hard if you look at the code instead of depending on code to find the bad code.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Bizzare

According to the "Why was this site blocked?" page, Skin Horse is completely clean. However, changing the URL so it looks at the domain root, a different story is revealed. Blocking the entire domain because dodgy stuff was found on two pages within it (neither of which were within Shaenon's subsite) seems a bit like using the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut...
 
 
--Ben


This space intentionally left blank.

As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

Chrome

Also will not allow cut and paste to be used within a java applet.