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+-- Thread: CAUTION: Avoid Cooks Illustrated site for a while (/showthread.php?tid=55957)
CAUTION: Avoid Cooks Illustrated site for a while - labradors - 04-22-2008
Overnight, the website for Cooks Illustrated was hit by a "code-injection" attack which could attempt to steal your password or even plant a virus/trojan on your computer, especially if you use Internet Explorer.
Last night and this morning, I was browsing the site to see if I could add their index information to the magazine recipe index on my site. Last night, all looked well, and it appeared I would, indeed, be able to use that information.
This morning, however, the site was filled with "broken-image" icons where the image tags had been changed to include browser script code. Even before I noticed that point, however, I thought I had just been encountering one of those problems that some websites have with Firefox, so I tried Internet Explorer. When I tried to do an "Advanced Search," IE warned me that it was trying to run some kind of "Microsoft database" software on MY machine! I rejected that, and closed IE, but before it had completely closed, my anti-virus software warned about three threats in the IE temporary files. Of course, I got rid of those files.
Right now, their office just opened up, and I'm going to call them about this. I would recommend staying away from the CI website, at least for today - maybe for tomorrow, as well, until they can remove the problematic material.
Re: CAUTION: Avoid Cooks Illustrated site for a while - cjs - 04-22-2008
Wow, that could hurt them (and us!)
Re: CAUTION: Avoid Cooks Illustrated site for a wh - labradors - 04-22-2008
UPDATE: Although the rep to whom I spoke was not aware of anything, it appears the webmasters are. Just after opening time, they switched it so that many things now just come up with the message:
Quote:
We're sorry.
CooksIllustrated.com is performing routine maintenance and will return shortly. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope you will visit us again soon!
Thus, since the infected parts of the site can no longer be accessed (because you will just get the above message), it is probably okay to check the site, periodically, until that message is gone (presuming they only remove the message once things are back to normal).
Re: CAUTION: Avoid Cooks Illustrated site for a wh - DFen911 - 04-22-2008
I really hate hackers and virus creators. Thanks for the update Labs! I hope your system is intact.
Re: CAUTION: Avoid Cooks Illustrated site for a wh - labradors - 04-22-2008
Yep. No problem. AVG caught the parts that IE let through, and Firefox didn't let anything through on its end.
Thanks for the thought, though.