Sophos red flags Google Analytics

Posted by   Virus Bulletin on   Jun 10, 2011

Popular analytics tool mistakenly flagged as 'high risk'.

Security firm Sophos had an embarrassing moment this morning when its scanner flagged Google Analytics as malicious.

While the average Internet user may have little experience with Google's analytics tool, it is used by half of the one million most popular websites - to track information about site visits through a number of scripts embedded in the web page. The false positive (FP) would thus have been seen by almost every user of Sophos's malware scanner online between 5am and 6am GMT.

Upon discovery of the FP, the company quickly released a fix that has since been issued to all its customers, with the scanning engines being updated automatically.

Sophos is far from the first company to suffer an embarrassing false positive and it is unlikely to be the last. Thankfully, the company did the only right thing to do in such a case: fixed the issue, warned customers and openly admitted its mistake.

More at Sophos's Naked Security blog here.

Posted on 10 June 2011 by Virus Bulletin

twitter.png
fb.png
linkedin.png
hackernews.png
reddit.png

 

Latest posts:

VBSpam tests to be executed under the AMTSO framework

VB is excited to announce that, starting from the Q3 test, all VBSpam tests of email security products will be executed under the AMTSO framework.

In memoriam: Prof. Ross Anderson

We were very sorry to learn of the passing of Professor Ross Anderson a few days ago.

In memoriam: Dr Alan Solomon

We were very sorry to learn of the passing of industry pioneer Dr Alan Solomon earlier this week.

New paper: Nexus Android banking botnet – compromising C&C panels and dissecting mobile AppInjects

In a new paper, researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Bansal provide details of a security vulnerability in the Nexus Android botnet C&C panel that was exploited in order to gather threat intelligence, and present a model of mobile AppInjects.

New paper: Collector-stealer: a Russian origin credential and information extractor

In a new paper, F5 researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Chaturvedi present a 360 analysis of Collector-stealer, a Russian-origin credential and information extractor.

We have placed cookies on your device in order to improve the functionality of this site, as outlined in our cookies policy. However, you may delete and block all cookies from this site and your use of the site will be unaffected. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to Virus Bulletin's use of data as outlined in our privacy policy.