Qualys – Malware scanning of websites
March 21st, 2010 by Andreas from Xavier Media® in Antivirus & Security, The World According to Xavier, Tutorials. Topics: encoded Javascript, Malware, qualys, scanning, trojans, websitesOne problem most people owning a blog or web site got is that you constantly need to check your own site for malware and evil code. Today it's way too common that malicious code is inserted in web site hijacking the visitors and most likely also infecting their computers with trojans. So if you have a website or blog you need to make sure your visitors can trust that your site is free from malware and other evil code.
You could of course check your site manually, but that's really hard work. The other option is to wait for Google to block your site for hosting/spreading malware, but then the damage is already done.
The solution is called Qualys, a company specializing in security solutions. Qualys got a free service called QualysGuard® Malware Detection Service where they will scan up to 2,000 pages of your web site to see if you have any malware or evil code. The service is still in beta, but from what I can see when I tested the service on XavierMedia.com it's working very good. Sign up at Qualys.com for an account and setup your site to be scanned. You can select to have the site scanned at a specified time every day or you can scan your site manually.
The manual scan slowed down my web browser, but the automated daily scan seems to be working really well.
The service can detect many different evil stuff on your site like encoded Javascripts and document.writes with obfuscation which is something used by malware authors to disguise their content. The scanner should also be able to detect known vulnerabilities.
No malware was found at XavierMedia.com during the scan, but if the scanner would have detected something would have provided a report showing what they had found and how to easily remove it from your site. So by using Qualys services you could save your website or blog from getting blocked by Google 
and yur visitors can of course trust your site not to infect their computers.
About the authorAndreas co-founded Xavier Media® in 1996 and has since been involved in all kinds of development, marketing and making money online.
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