First cracks in McAfeeSiteAdvisor

[polonus]

Hi malware fighters,

What was feared by some after McAfee took over siteadvisor has materialized. First cracks are there. If your searchqueries are for free download sites, you get a yellow alert like this:

Quote:
Mod_python error: "PythonHandler index"

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/sa/dossier/python/current/lib/python2.3/site-packages/mod_python/apache.py", line 287, in HandlerDispatch
    log=debug)

  File "/sa/dossier/python/current/lib/python2.3/site-packages/mod_python/apache.py", line 464, in import_module
    module = imp.load_module(mname, f, p, d)

  File "/sa/dossier/dynamic/index.py", line 43, in ?
    sitesDir = GlobalInfo.sitesDir

AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'sitesDir' End Quote"


Happily there is still the similar scandoo service to help you out, or the DrWeb hyperlink checker. Is McAfee known for letting a good service go "bunkers". If you are paranoid enough, you might think they do it on purpose, or are they just not interested? Anyway sad news, my dear undoer's-of-evil,

polonus

[bob3160]

Which website caused this error? I haven't had any problems at all with

[polonus]

Hi Bob,

Use this link for this specific search query result page, and see it for yourself: give in: softpedia. All yellow results for me, and all with the same phyton script line errors. There are some more sites like this. If you get the same, it means the linkrot has set in on this once so promishing free service. Anxious to hear your results here. My search request was:
http://www.google.com/search?q=softpedia&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=flock&rls=FlockInc.:en-US:official


What did you see?

friend polonus

[DavidR]

Well Dr Web doesn't seem to have a problem, but it only reports on the search page as it only has 4 entries in its window.

Since this siteadvisor error message
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'sitesDir' End Quote" relates to an attribute I guess it can't find a web page in that string, a ' ? ' or ' & ' can often cause issues as these are special characters.

So it may be that it requires a specific url link rather than a search string. I no longer use the siteadvisor extension (disabled awaiting an update to my suggestion it should work in the same way as Dr Web on demand) so I can't test that link directly. However, from the siteadvisor web site if you paste that url into the window it has no problem all it does is return the list of urls that would have been returned by google (but no categorisations). Unfortunately the listing doesn't seem to bear any resemblance to what is returned if you paste the URL into google.

[polonus]

Hello DavidR,

If you want to do an on demand scan, well that can be done quite easily. Just altering the standard query and pate it into your browser URL like this: http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/searchlores.org?ref=safesearch&aff_id=0

The bit you change is searchlores.org into e.g. ad.nl, and you see it works, make a standard form, and you can fire away,

polonus

Or if I was you, I would bookmark scandoo and search with that.

polonus

[DavidR]

What I want in site advisor is not to check every page that I visit (e.g. not active) rather have a context menu item like Dr Web so I can check before visiting a site.

I'm looking for the ease of Dr Web without having to scan every site I visit or jump through hoops to do a check, that is no different in what I'm having to do visit siteadvisor (SA) and paste the url.

I wasn't too impressed by the scandoo site, which isn't to dissimilar to SA as it would also slow the search as it scans the returned hits. This is another of the things I didn't like about SA, being a dial-up user it slows page loads and search results. I only want it to scan suspect web sites that I select, via the right click menu (easy no hassle, no hoops to jump through).

[polonus]

Hello DavidR,

There is another way to determine if a site is secure.
Go here: http://mtas.surfcontrol.com/mtas/MTAS.asp
It is coming to this result from another angle.
But I agree that a linux service against a remote database would be the ideal solution. In that respect the people from St Petersburg are clever or as we say "sprytni".

polonus

[DavidR]

Thanks Polonus, I used this to check anonym.to with some interesting results bearing in mind Bobs comment about that same site when checked by siteadvisor in another thread.