Xavier Media®

These days we can read about all kinds of attacks, software vulnerabilities, security updates for blogs more then ever before, and I don't think this will ever slow down as long as the attackers can earn money from this activity . Therefore you as the site owner must keep an eye on your own web site or blog to make sure it's safe for your visitors.

One of the biggest online book stores in Sweden (www.bokia.se) is at the moment closed due to malware. Earlier this week Google started blocking this site due to malware the Googlebot found on the site. According to the scan report from Google they found amazing 182 infected pages at the domain bokia.se!!!! This is really amazing since Bookia is not a small basement company, but a really big one (9,291 in Sweden according to Alexa), a company you would normally trust.

For the users it's at the moment no danger since Bokia closed their web site earlier today and the site has been blocked by Firefox for most of the week. But for an e-commerce company forced to close their main web site and store it could mean bankruptcy!

Bokia will of course survive this, but it will cost them a lot in both lost sales and badwill. Would you want to place an order at their site after this? Will you give them your credit card or other personal information after this? I don't think so…..

What can you do to make sure your site is safe?

1. Make sure you always update your blog software and other scripts you got on your site to the latest version when a new security fix is released.
2. Secure your own PHP code so you're not going to end up as a victim for SQL injections.
3. Test your site at Google's Safebrowsing site to see if they've found something suspicious: http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?client=Firefox&hl=en-EN&site=http://www.sampleaddress.com/
   Replace www.sampleaddress.com with your own site.
4. Check your site at for example McAfees SiteAdvisor.com every now and then
   

About the author
Andreas co-founded Xavier Media® in 1996 and has since been involved in all kinds of development, marketing and making money online.