Update: Slideshare fixes weekend virus scare
Posted on July 26th, 2009 in Video | 4 Comments »
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Most of you know I love Slideshare, the premiere slideshow / presentation sharing site. Its a great way to get started with online multimedia.
But something very strange happened over the weekend that I wrote about on Saturday night.
Folks who visited the site and clicked on links have had suspicious looking pop-ups show up on their screen saying their machine has been infected by a virus.
Well some prompt overnight sleuthing by the Slideshare staff turned up the culprit: A spammer masquerading as an advertiser. Well the folks at Slideshare removed the ad, put some preventative measures in place, and no new reports of weirdness over the last few days.
You can read the full story on the Slideshare blog.
The upshot is you can once again enjoy the spectacular presentations with complete piece of mind.
4 Responses
Rob,
We suspect ads – and have been turning them off one by one. At this point all but our own ads (advertising site functionality) are off. Which is why I am curious if anyone has had a new incident in the last 12 hours since we turned off the last ads.
We are also looking into the possibility that this is a cross side scripting attack. For several reasons, that does not seem to be the case, but we are remaining open to all possibilities.
If you do hear of any *new* incident, please drop us a line
Our sincere apologies regarding this.
Rashmi
CEO & Cofounder
SlideShare
[Reply]
Hi Rashmi:
Thanks so much to you for getting in touch. I have been funneling information to you and Amit about what I know. Yes, I did hear of two new incidents today that were not involved with clicking ads.
Alot of the folks I know are laying back until more is known.
I will be staying in touch with a group of folks I know who have been affected and will report any new info that I have.
[Reply]
Rob,
We think we have identified the problem – it was an ad. Our engineers have been able to reproduce the problem.
We are taking measures to make sure this never happens again.
All should be fine when you visit the site, but of course, let us know if you still have problems. And thanks much for sharing information about the problem.
Rashmi
[Reply]
Hi Rashmi:
Thanks so much. So it sounds like you have fixed the problem.
I will get word out to the folks I know who were affected and update the blog story as soon as I get back to the office.
Thanks again for your prompt attention and communication.
Best,
Rob
[Reply]