MacRumors Bug: Hijacks to another site

arian19 · Jul 20, 2013

Macrumors seems to have a bug/Trojan in the website. About every 50 or so times I load the page, the entire page hijacks me to another site

Seems like someone is trying to get more traffic.

Anyone else exerpeiced this hijack?

GGJstudios · Jul 20, 2013

arian19 said:
Macrumors seems to have a bug/Trojan in the website. About every 50 or so times I load the page, the entire page hijacks me to:

If you haven't already done so, try changing your DNS servers on your Mac and your router to OpenDNS servers. This will show you how: Why am I being redirected to other sites?

SandboxGeneral · Jul 20, 2013

I doubt it has anything to do with our site, you may check your DNS settings in your router and your computer.

arian19 · Jul 20, 2013

It's happening through LTE on my iPhone, ios7...

Doubt it is my side, unless someone messed with ATT network.

GGJstudios · Jul 20, 2013

arian19 said:
It's happening through LTE on my iPhone, ios7...

Double it is my side, unless someone messed with ATT network.

Try clearing all your browser cookies, cache and website data. It's not the MR site.

arian19 · Jul 20, 2013

GGJstudios said:
Try clearing all your browser cookies, cache and website data. It's not the MR site.

That was my original guess of the problem... I cleared them all, and I even open up MR on private browsing setting, and I still experience it. I check the MR site about 15-30 times a day, and it's only redirected me twice in the last week. But to the same exact site.

How are you so sure it's not the MR site?

GGJstudios · Jul 20, 2013

arian19 said:
That was my original guess of the problem... I cleared them all, and I even open up MR on private browsing setting, and I still experience it. I check the MR site about 15-30 times a day, and it's only redirected me twice in the last week. But to the same exact site.

How are you so sure it's not the MR site?

Because you're the only one experiencing it. If it was a problem with the MR site, everyone would be experiencing the same problem. I'm on this site more often than most, and I've never had a redirect to another site.

DotCom2 · Jul 20, 2013

arian19 said:
Macrumors seems to have a bug/Trojan in the website. About every 50 or so times I load the page, the entire page hijacks me to another site

Seems like someone is trying to get more traffic.

Anyone else exerpeiced this hijack?

Yeah, I've been having problems too only mine comes up what looks like a virus warning from my Microsoft Security Essentials saying it's encountered a virus from this web site but the message looks like a bad scan so I just close out the browser IE9 and check my anti-virus and it shows no such virus detection. It was happening pretty regularly and seems to have subsided now. Also, it made the MacRumors web site work REAL SLOW and I have fast Fios download so I knew something was up.

It's only been on the MacRumors site so I do think it's related.
Something is deff up though.

SandboxGeneral · Jul 20, 2013

Sometimes people will get a malicious site warning when coming here, but that only happens when a user (usually a spammer) posts something with a URL to a malicious site. We're quite good at finding them and removing them quickly.

In this case, I searched the forums and did not find any reference to the URL that was posted in this thread.

Apple fanboy · Jul 20, 2013

Never had anything like that here on any platform or browser. I use my iPhone, iMac (Safari) and if I'm at work my PC (Firefox). Does it happen on multiple browsers?

WildCowboy · Jul 20, 2013

We're aware of the issue and working to track down what's causing it.

BadLegBanks · Jul 20, 2013

I experienced the same issue while browsing the MacRumors forums a few days ago. I was inadvertently redirected to a not-so-scrupulous website while reloading a thread. I was using mobile Safari on iOS 6. Not jailbroken, nor do I ever visit untrusted or shady websites on my phone.

I believe it was possibly the work of a rogue ad server connected to this site, as I haven't had it happen anywhere else.

Anyway, just thought I'd give my two cents. The OP isn't crazy.

arn · Jul 20, 2013

BadLegBanks said:
I experienced the same issue while browsing the MacRumors forums a few days ago. I was inadvertently redirected to a not-so-scrupulous website while reloading a thread. I was using mobile Safari on iOS 6. Not jailbroken, nor do I ever visit untrusted or shady websites on my phone.

I believe it was possibly the work of a rogue ad server connected to this site, as I haven't had it happen anywhere else.

Anyway, just thought I'd give my two cents. The OP isn't crazy.

arian19 said:
It's happening through LTE on my iPhone, ios7...

Doubt it is my side, unless someone messed with ATT network.

DotCom2 said:
Yeah, I've been having problems too only mine comes up what looks like a virus warning from my Microsoft Security Essentials saying it's encountered a virus from this web site but the message looks like a bad scan so I just close out the browser IE9 and check my anti-virus and it shows no such virus detection. It was happening pretty regularly and seems to have subsided now. Also, it made the MacRumors web site work REAL SLOW and I have fast Fios download so I knew something was up.

It's only been on the MacRumors site so I do think it's related.
Something is deff up though.

Hey guys,

There is something odd going on.

If this (redirects) or warnings happen, please do the following:

1. Screenshot of the page
2. View Source and save it to a file
3. Let me know what browser / platform.

thanks
arn

arn · Jul 20, 2013

arian19 said:
It's happening through LTE on my iPhone, ios7...

Doubt it is my side, unless someone messed with ATT network.

Is this on the front page or forums? Mobile theme or not?

thanks
arn

Nyy8 · Jul 21, 2013

I feel like it might have to do with window's PCs, at least in some cases. I really can't explain the mobile redirects. I myself have not had any redirections yet, and I've been running on Mac this entire time.

I will bootcamp later, and see if I can dig up anything.

Update 2:Could It have anything to do with the new PHP feature, and advertisers using that is their ads?

http://php.about.com/od/learnphp/ht/phpredirection.htm

Update 3:

Now I am either crazy or I am onto something. The reason why DotCom2 experienced these "redirects" is because he is on IE9, IE9 does not support adblock plus. Meaning he was able to see the ads, the same going with BadLegBanks and arian19 they are on mobile meaning they can also see ads.

The Reason why GGJstudios and SandboxGeneral also have not seen these "redirections" is because SandboxGeneral is a demi-god meaning he does not get ads. I'm going to assume GGJstudios donates so he does not see ads.

arn · Jul 21, 2013

Nyy8 said:
I feel like it might have to do with window's PCs, at least in some cases. I really can't explain the mobile redirects. I myself have not had any redirections yet, and I've been running on Mac this entire time.

At this point we're pretty sure it's a stray ad that got snuck into the rotation.

We've working on identifying it.

Please let us know if it happens again.

arn

arian19 · Jul 22, 2013

arn said:
Is this on the front page or forums? Mobile theme or not?

thanks
arn

This was on the desktop version of the website, using mobile safari. Using my iPhone 5, with iOS 7, Safari. The first time it happened, I believe I was already on the homepage and I clicked Mac Blog tab, next to the Front Page tab.

The second time I had clicked a home screen bookmark of MacRumors, and while it was loading the home page, I was redirected.

Both times though it took me to the same page, with id=936. I've tried to recreate the steps to cause the redirect, however it seems it's setup to do it on random page loads. Seems like about ever 200 times I've loaded macrumors, it's happened twice. So maybe once ever 100 times...

arn · Jul 22, 2013

arian19 said:
This was on the desktop version of the website, using mobile safari. Using my iPhone 5, with iOS 7, Safari. The first time it happened, I believe I was already on the homepage and I clicked Mac Blog tab, next to the Front Page tab.

The second time I had clicked a home screen bookmark of MacRumors, and while it was loading the home page, I was redirected.

Both times though it took me to the same page, with id=936. I've tried to recreate the steps to cause the redirect, however it seems it's setup to do it on random page loads. Seems like about ever 200 times I've loaded macrumors, it's happened twice. So maybe once ever 100 times...

Thanks. Yep, it's a bad ad. We've contacted our ad provider to have it removed.

arn

arn · Jul 22, 2013

This should be fixed now. It was a bad ad. Sorry for the problem.

Let me know if you see it again.

arn

smithrh · Jul 22, 2013

Good work to find that!

But really what I want to say is that, once again, the hair-trigger quick replies to the post were simply wrong.

DotCom2 · Jul 23, 2013

smithrh said:
Good work to find that!

But really what I want to say is that, once again, the hair-trigger quick replies to the post were simply wrong.

Yeah, I noticed that as well.
I'm not having anymore problems now but when I saw that the original OP's complaint was quickly dispelled, I decided I better chime in.

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