As StopBadware and the environment in which we operate evolve, we continually evaluate where to focus our resources and attention. Over the next couple of months, we'll be making a few changes that reflect our current priorities. Hiring a "raconteur," or communication specialist, is one such change. This will allow us to work more closely with the community, our industry partners, and our other constituents to ensure that effective techniques for protecting users from badware reach the greatest possible audience.
Another change is that we'll reduce—for now—our emphasis on technical research and "deep-dive" analysis of badware sites. In place of a dedicated research function, we'll create a new, broader role that includes a bit of data sifting, along with hands-on systems work, testing, documentation, and more. (Job posting coming soon.)
Finally, we'll be introducing more events, like our upcoming web chat, that bring people together to discuss and share ideas about how best to protect users from badware.
With these changes, along with our continued work assisting webmasters and our data providers, we believe that StopBadware will be in a great position to expand our impact and make the Internet safer for all of us.
Gee what a wonderful initiative. Now, all of a sudden, I cannot access my favourite sports blog because, between last night and this morning, “StopBadwar.org” has decided that it is an attack site.
And yet neither of my other two computers running Firefox with the same security settings report anything amiss.
Frustratingly, clicking the “ignore this warning” or “this isn’t an attack site” links do not take me to the site.
You’ve screwed up and I hope they sue the pants off you.
I appreciate the frustration of being unable to visit a site you enjoy in your browser of choice. That said, I think you may misunderstand what happened and the role StopBadware played.
Firefox has a security feature that protects users from badware websites. It does this by inserting a “Reported Attack Site” warning. Firefox periodically downloads its list of badware websites from Google, which scans sites automatically and detects badware behavior. Often, the badware sites are not inherently malicious, but rather legit sites that have been infected without the knowledge of their owners.
Because of the way the security feature is designed in Firefox, the “Ignore this warning” link doesn’t always work as intended. Mozilla is aware of this issue and will likely address it in a future Firefox version.
StopBadware is a non-profit organization that works to protect users from badware. One way we do this is to work with Google, Mozilla, and other companies to help ensure that users and webmasters alike are treated fairly, protected well, and educated appropriately. There are times when the systems don’t work perfectly, but overall, we are confident that we and our partners are meeting this goal.