Almost ten days ago I wrote briefly about how this site got haxx0red and had been unintentionally serving a hijacking script, and how you would probably have trouble even visiting if you were using FF3. As it turns out, if you attempted to visit any of the pages here through Google, you also got a warning about this being a potential attack site. This was pretty fucking annoying, truth be told. Irony of ironies, I used Google’s very own Analytics service to watch how traffic was directed away from my site day by day as a result of scary warnings from Google and Firefox 3.
Quite honestly, I assumed that the road to reconciling this problem with stopbadware.org (the people who you need to go through to get taken off the “attack site” list for both FF and Google – oh, and possibly some antivirus/antispyware apps as well) would be a long and possibly ultimately futile one.
This suspicion was fueled by the results of the first review I asked stopbadware.org to perform on my site after I had cleaned the hijacking script off it: They said their review showed my site to be clean and that they had asked Google to perform their own review. Google’s review came up with the result that my site was still infected, but this was highly suspect in my eyes because the directories they claimed to find infections in no longer existed – I’d deleted them in my initial cleanup of the site! Was Google searching a cached version of my site? Was it a version Google itself had cached? Madness. I explained as much to stopbadware.org when I requested a second review of my site…
I checked on the status of my site last night and saw that “Google has removed the warning for this site.” I checked in Google search results and in Firefox 3 this afternoon and it seems that my site is being treated as normal again. Overall, I’m very happy with how things turned out and found the review process for stopbadware.org to be reasonably expedient considering the number of requests for review they must receive.
I must admit, however, that I don’t agree with the way FF3 or Google is handling sites that got hacked like mine did. It seems way too much of a “nanny state” mentality to me, especially since the same functionality is already built into many antivirus/antispyware/antiadware apps. I’m not saying that I want people to get infected with malware; I’m saying that I don’t think it’s the role of search engines or web browsers to protect people from it.
////////////////////////////////////////////
thx, gen.
Blatant Thievery
The only thing better than Devo suing McDonalds would be Devo OWNING McDonalds.
Steven Seagal can’t get no love
This is quite excellent: Tokyo Mango’s Interview with the Dalai Lama’s Youngest Brother
The money quote:
“And then, on the other side of the scale, there’s Steven Seagal. Oh my god. I met him when he came here. He was wearing a funny coat, a Chinese brocade, funny trousers, and funny shoes with that ponytail. I asked him, “Why do you dress in such a peculiar manner?” He didn’t say anything. He’s arrogant, and pretends to be a Tibetan reincarnate. But why? He’s a strange man.”
Dissed by the Dalai Lama’s brother. Dude…
Violent Femmes Cover of “Crazy”
I despise myspace, but that’s where this jam is hosted: Violent and Crazy
Is this the Femmes’ answer to this?
Our New Thai House Part 2 – Foundations
When setting the first foundation of a Thai house, it is a common practice to hire a Brahman priest and hold a blessing ceremony. Enter Ajarn Chachawan (Ajarn is an honorific title equivalent to sensei in Japanese and pretty much nothing in English), pictured on the left in the photo below. He was also the announcer/master of ceremonies who did the morning ceremony for our wedding two years ago. He will also be supervising the installation of an animistic “spirit house” on our property this month or next. Truth be told, he’s pretty much our go-to guy for all our Brahman needs.
Clockwise from Ajarn Chachawan: Mother-in-law, yours truly, worker, Nam, worker in red shirt, worker in OSHA-approved safety flip flops (standard worker footwear here; they even weld and walk on roof support beams in them).
////////////////////////
The shot below was taken from the rear of our property (marked with wooden border) toward the pond and front of the (then future) house.
You can see the two foundations we just planted held in place with tripodal wooden supports. Tied to those foundations with holy-ish string are items of various significance such as banana tree branches and a woven reed fish trap with coins (Thai Baht) in it (we were warned not to put a lot of money in the trap since it would be stolen in the night. And of course it was.). In the holes for the foundations, under the two-piece (tower in basket) wrought iron assembly, we also placed items of various significance which we purchased/gathered a day earlier. This included a specific kind of unhusked “new” rice (that I popped over the stove like popcorn), leaves of a religiously significant species of tree (from a nice old lady’s yard – she also gave us seeds to plant our own trees with, but we lost them), special gold/silver/bronze painted bricks and cedarlike stakes that we purchased at a Buddhist goods store, plus a few other things that escape my memory (at one point I had the list we used for shopping but I lost this as well).
/////////////////////////////
Our New Thai House entries:
Our New Thai House Part 1 – Picking a Plot
Our New Thai House Part 2 – Foundations
Our New Thai House Part 3 – Groundwork
Our New Thai House Part 4 – Roof and Walls
Our New Thai House Part 5 – The Blessing Way
Landscaping Our House – Before and After
Zatoichi #6
I don’t even have time to watch Zato anymore, but I love these graphics and wanted to continue from where I left off a couple years ago in Japan.
All my previous Zatoichi posts.
This is not an intentional attack site
A couple of friends let me know that this site is being listed as an “attack site” in Firefox 3 and at least one antivirus program (Avast). This is not without reason. I found a hijacking script in my main index page today. I promptly deleted it, but am not sure how the script got there in the first place. I’ve taken steps to prevent it from happening again, but this is just another reason I’m leaving Dreamhost.
In the meantime, I apologize if this problem affected anybody, and this is NOT AN ATTACK SITE (anymore, admittedly).
I wonder how long it will take for FF3 to unlist me as an attack site now. According to this page, “The list of known attack sites is maintained by the community and updated regularly.” Hope that works both ways, for removing attack site status as well as adding it. Anybody know? (hint hint)
Here is the warning message appearing in Firefox 3: View image
