Security Blog

Three weeks ago it was disclosed that McAfee’s website contained numerous security vulnerabilities. What make this disclosure significant is that at the time the website was found vulnerable, the McAfee Secure service, which scans websites for security issues, was certifying that the website was secure and McAfee’s website contained a trustmark from McAfee Secure letting visitors know this. This claim was obviously not true at the time. This situation underscores the fact that the McAfee Secure service and other companies security scanning services, as well as the trustmarks they provide to websites, cannot be trusted to identify if a website is secure. This is because scanners can only actually determine is that the website does not contain specific security issues that the maker of the scanner knows about and is testing for. If, as in the case of McAfee’s website, they do not know about the specific security issue they would never detect it and the trustmark would still claim the website is secure.

In the case of McAfee they don’t even seem to be very focused on the security that their scanner is supposed to provide. On the web page for McAfee Secure, the emphasize is placed not on any increased security the product provides but on claims that having their trustmark on the website will increase sales for the website.

While those scanners limitation in only being albe to detect known security issues is a big issue there is also a much bigger problem with these scanners, they scan the website from the outside. This is often touted as a feature, but it is a major weakness of the services. What it means is that anything that is not accessible from the outside cannot be scanned, so even if a scanner could detect all possibilities security issues that are detectable from the outside the website can still be insecure. Here are a couple of real world examples we have dealt with where these scanners failed in this way:

We were contacted about a website in which files on the website were having spam links added to them repeatedly. The client had run two of these scanners and they hadn’t found the security issue allowing this to happen. After discussing the situation with them we were able to assist them in finding a backdoor script which was allowing this to occur. A backdoor script allows a hacker remote access to the website. In their simplest form they execute code sent to them. More advanced ones provide a variety of tools and the ability to view the websites files. It is almost impossible for one these scanners to detect a backdoor script. The backdoor script can be given a random name and placed anywhere in a website. So the scanner would need to scan a nearly unlimited number of URLs to be able to request the backdoor script. Depending on the backdoor script, they might also need to request the backdoor script in a certain way for it to be possible to detect that it is a backdoor that is at the location. Needless to say, these scanners do not attempt this.

In a more serious situation we had a client where credit card information entered on their website was being transmitted to someone who was using it to attempt to make fraudulent purchases. They had run it through one these scanners without it finding any issues. What we found was that a hacker had placed some code into the file that handled credit card input, which transmitted the information to another website. The web page were you inputted the credit card information was exactly the same as it would be without the code, so it is impossible for a scanner to detect this type of thing.

For webmasters who utilize widely used software like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc., the software will have already been run through these security scanners, so as long you keep the software updated the scanners are of little use. If you use custom written software you’re much better off having someone who is a familiar with handling security in programming language the website is written in review your website. They might use one these  security scanners as part of their process in addition to other methods. They would also be able to correct the insecure code, which something that is going to need to done if the scanner identifies anything anyway.

Back in March we wrote a post about the danger of unethical hack repair services. This is certainly not the only area that we deal in where there is unethical behavior. On a fairly regular basis we are contacted about issues from companies that are being paid to maintain websites despite not knowing what they need to do maintain the websites and not having the ability to perform that maintenance even if they knew what it was.

In that post we discussed a company called TVCNet, which also does business as hackrepair.com, thehackrepairguy.com, and “The Hack Repair Guy”. We were stunned by a recent interaction with them and felt it was important to write about what happened so that public at large could be aware as well. Here is what we wrote about them in that post:

What we haven’t dealt with before is a company that offers to clean up hacked websites contact us and admit that they were unable to determine how a website was hacked and wanted us to do it for them. Then last week we were contacted by a representative from TVCNet, which also advertises their service at hackrepair.com. They told us that they were good at removing the hack code, but a website they cleaned was being reinfected and they couldn’t determine what was allowing the website to be reinfected. The infection that they describe was one that should have been very easy to determine the source of if they had even very modest experience dealing with cleaning up after hacks. It certainly should not have been a problem for someone that is charging clients 350 dollars to clean up a hacked website (they apparently charge extra to upgrade software, even though that is often essential for securing a website).

With a company operating in what we consider an unethical manner, it is not a surprise that they are also lying about their service. They claim that they “We will work direct with Google staff, and ensure your web site is unblocked by Google”. The truth is getting unblocked by Google is a completely automated process that doesn’t involve working directly with Google staff.

On Monday, they left a comment on our blog that sidestepped the substance of post, it appeared that may not have even bothered to read the post, while making a number of accusations against us (we moderate comments so you won’t see it). We sent them an email letting them know we would not be posting the comment and informing them that we would post a correction if there was a factual mistake in the post.  We are always happy to post a correction if there is a factual mistake in one of our post, that is mentioned in the “Did We Make a Mistake?”section of this blog’s sidebar.

The next day we received an email from them that claimed the post was inaccurate, but did not dispute any of the facts present in the article. What they did instead was to falsely accuse us of slander. It is impossible for our written post to have been slanderous, but it is also was not any other form of defamation either. Defamation requires, among other things, that a statement of fact be false. We stand behind the facts in that article as well as the opinions presented. They so far have also not disputed any of the facts present in the post.

In both instances they requested we remove the post. In the second instances they tied the request to their false accusation of slander, with the implicit implication of bringing that up that an illegal act had occurred and that there could be legal remedies. We won’t be doing that as it is important for the public to know of the danger of unethical hack repair services, especially if companies don’t want you to know about it.

There most recent response also raised other troubling issues. In the email they claim to have had to spend over 40 hours clearing up the hack in question. We have never spent anywhere that much time clearing up after hack and the hack in this case was particular simple so it should not have taken that long. To us, that seems to be an indication that something is really wrong with their capabilities or process. That further backs up our opinion that they operate in unethical manner by providing a service that do not have the necessary experience to do properly.

That response also indicated that they had moved that hacked clients to their hosting service. We strongly believe that hack repair providers should not involved in any way in with moving users to a hosting provider they have a financial relationship with, especially one that has had security issues within the recent past. In a post last year it was disclosed that TVCNet’s servers come “with the standard formmail.cgi  XSS and cgiecho  information disclosure vulnerabilities”. That post also claims that “you can bet they spin more than their fair share of BS.” So we are not the only people that have concerns about this company.

Before publishing this post, we will be offering not publish it as long as TVCNet agrees to stop trying to intimidate us into suppressing our previous posting about the danger of unethical hack repair services and stop making potentially defamatory statements about us. We hope they take up the offer and stop making a bad situation of their own making worse. If this is posted, it means that they continue to want the public not be able read this important information.

Update (April 22, 2011): Since this post was published the situation has taken an odd and disturbing turn. Employee(s) of TVCNet have become rather obsessed with our company and our employees. They have been posting bizarre, incoherent rants about us, as well as posting personal information about employees, across the Internet. At the same time they have not informed us of any actual factual mistakes in our original post, which if they actually existed we would happily post a correction for. What is occurring is certainly not something that a reputable company would be doing and unfortunately seems to be an indication that the employee(s) of the company may have mental health issues, if that is the case we certainly hope that they will get help for those issues.

We have long noticed companies that are offering to fix hacked website appear to lack an understanding of what that actually entails them doing for clients. What they often fail to understand or simply don’t care about is that simply removing the hack is not enough. You have to determine how the website was hacked and make sure that has been fixed or it is likely to be hacked again. We strongly believe that doing otherwise is highly unethical, as it exposes the website and it’s visitors to the potential of infection or data exposure. It also seems to us to be a rip-off as your paying someone for cleaning up an issue that could quickly return. We are often hired to clean up websites that someone attempted to clean up before but were not properly secured after they were hacked

Determining how a website was hacked and properly securing is much harder than just removing the hack. It requires a general understanding of the technology underlying websites, a knowledge of the software that is being used on a website, how hackers operate, prior experience, among other things. There are some situations where we could easily remove the hack from a website but we know that we don’t have relevant expertise to properly secure the website, in those cases we provide the potential client with the information on what needs to be done to secure the website for free.

What we haven’t dealt with before is a company that offers to clean up hacked websites contact us and admit that they were unable to determine how a website was hacked and wanted us to do it for them. Then last week we were contacted by a representative from TVCNet, which also advertises their service at hackrepair.com. They told us that they were good at removing the hack code, but a website they cleaned was being reinfected and they couldn’t determine what was allowing the website to be reinfected. The infection that they describe was one that should have been very easy to determine the source of if they had even very modest experience dealing with cleaning up after hacks. It certainly should not have been a problem for someone that is charging clients 350 dollars to clean up a hacked website (they apparently charge extra to upgrade software, even though that is often essential for securing a website).

With a company operating in what we consider an unethical manner, it is not a surprise that they are also lying about their service. They claim that “We will work direct with Google staff, and ensure your web site is unblocked by Google”. The truth is getting unblocked by Google is a completely automated process that doesn’t involve working directly with Google staff.

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be anything that we can do to stop this type of practice. If other companies contact us we can certainly highlight there unethical practices as well, but that won’t stop them or others from continuing these unethical practices. What we can do and have done for some time is to get accurate information out there on cleaning up after hacks so that those companies have a better chance of properly cleaning websites. From our analytics data it’s clear that many companies that might be dealing with those hacks have been accessing that information. Others also provide this type of information, but unfortunately we often find the information being put is inaccurate. We also have created a tool to detect popular backdoor scripts, which should help to prevent some hacked website from being reinfected as it would of in this situation. We also provide information on how to properly secure websites, which we run advertising to promote, so that websites don’t get hacked to begin with and then have to deal with these companies.