It's a question perhaps best answered with a question: is this merely the first time we've known about cyberwar tactics in the Canadian blogosphere? It doesn't actually answer the original question, nor does it even answer the question of whether the reporting of BloggingTories.ca as a badware site is part of any such a campaign.
As it pertains to the matter of coincidence, perhaps the internet is one of the few examples where life truly offers any. It is, after all, a large and diverse environment, wherein many different websites, each featuring their own software, interact with one another in a largely unpredictable manner.
It's possible that may at play in an episode that has many visitors to the website encountering this in its stead:
StopBadware, an organization Google and Mozilla cooperate with to identify so-called "attack sites" define badware as "software that fundamentally disregards a user’s choice about how his or her computer or network connection will be used."
It doesn't sound like anything one would expect to be present on a Blogging Tory site. When one examines the Google diagnostic page, it seems that it isn't even a Blogging Tory site that is the source of the problem:
Considering that the Google diagnostic page explicitly states that BloggingTories.ca has not hosted malicious software, it's clear that the malicious code has been added by a third party: that BloggingTories has merely been used as an intermediary to disseminate malicious software seemingly hosted on ForgottenCelebs.com to Stephen Taylor's blog, The Secrets of Vancouver, Moose and Squirrel, and seven other sites.
Interestingly enough, none of the sites listed above have been identified by StopBadware as an "attack site".
The question remains: did some technologically-savvy member of Canada's online far-left community deliberately add some bad code to the BloggingTories site in orer to justify reporting it to StopBadware as an "attack site"?
There's no question that many of them are obsessed with the site and would like to see it shut down. Adding malicious code to the site has certainly, at least in the sort term, accomplished the next best thing.
There's no question that Canada's far left is frustrated. No matter what they do, they can't convince Canadians to thoroughly repudiate conservative values, and can't seem to win on their own.
There's no reason to assume that a denizen of Canada's left is behind this: but there's ample reason to ask the question.
I wouldn't consider a conspiracy. These browsers always flag my site and mine isn't dangerous at all. They're just hyper-sensitive. They suck in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteUsing Internet Explorer browser does not replicate the same message.
ReplyDeleteI encountered the problem with Firefox and AVG. My workaround is using both browsers with my security kept up to date and on high.
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ReplyDeleteNow there's a leading question pointing to unfounded conspiracy theory speculation if I ever saw one.
ReplyDeleteIf I was to do any speculation it would be in the area of the three sites being compromised at the hosting level (the very reason in fact that I left the realm of private hosting and returned to blogspot) and Google paying a visit to compromised sites from the BT aggregator and making its decision based on that.
Not only is there no reason to assume that a denizen of Canada's left is behind this, there is an utter lack of any reasonable reason to ask the question.
I don't think there is lack of reasonable reason to ask this question.
ReplyDeleteNo one should be making any assumptions here, but I'm sorry, sl: to me, this just seems to fit into the modus operandi of how the most fervent members of Canada's far left have tended to operate.
I don't blame anyone for not agreeing. Like I said, the internet seems to provide penty of opportunities for coincidences to happen, and I see that.
I just have my suspicions that this really isn't a coincidence.