4 ms·

Bank of America Website Still Down – Cyber Attack?

6 points by gdltec 15y ago

tzs 15y ago
Warning for iPad users: the submitted site has the OnSwipe malware installed. (Yes, it is malware--it is typically installed without the site owner's knowledge and it crashes visitors browsers)
- gdltec 15y ago
  You are funny... the submitted site is a blog hosted by wordpress.com.
  - tzs 15y ago
    Yes, and wordpress.com by default checks the user agent, and if the user is on an iPad it replaces the theme chosen by the blog author with the OnSwipe theme. (The blog author can disable this by going to their blog settings, and finding the setting laughably labeled something like "optimize for mobile devices" and turning that off). There's no obvious warning when you set up a blog at wordpress.com that it will do this, and I expect it is contrary to what most blog owners expect--one of the whole points of iPad is that you do NOT need a special mobile site for it. There is a link at the bottom of the OnSwipe theme to switch to the standard site. Unfortunately by that point the damage has been done. OnSwipe uses a lot of memory--enough that if you have any other pages open they are likely to be forced out of cache, which is annoying. Worse, there's a good chance that it will run iPad Safari out of memory completely and cause it to crash. If it actually did something useful, there might be some excuse for this, but for most blogs the OnSwipe theme isn't more readable than the theme the blog author picked, and the OnSwipe them has horrible scrolling performance. (It apparently is handling scrolling itself via JavaScript, overriding the native scrolling in the browser, so the result is the scrolling is jerky and doesn't feel like any other scrolling on the iPad). Hence, I have concluded it is malware, because it provides no benefit to the user, and often provides harm (such as browser crashing), and neither the user reading the page nor the blog author whose blog it is on consented specifically to it (any consent was buried in some wordpress terms and conditions saying they could mess with your blog if they wanted to).
libria 15y ago
Of the 30k they're planning to lay off, they may want to whitelist a few network security guys.

6 points by gdltec 15y ago

tzs 15y ago

Warning for iPad users: the submitted site has the OnSwipe malware installed. (Yes, it is malware--it is typically installed without the site owner's knowledge and it crashes visitors browsers)

gdltec 15y ago
You are funny... the submitted site is a blog hosted by wordpress.com.
- tzs 15y ago
  Yes, and wordpress.com by default checks the user agent, and if the user is on an iPad it replaces the theme chosen by the blog author with the OnSwipe theme. (The blog author can disable this by going to their blog settings, and finding the setting laughably labeled something like "optimize for mobile devices" and turning that off). There's no obvious warning when you set up a blog at wordpress.com that it will do this, and I expect it is contrary to what most blog owners expect--one of the whole points of iPad is that you do NOT need a special mobile site for it. There is a link at the bottom of the OnSwipe theme to switch to the standard site. Unfortunately by that point the damage has been done. OnSwipe uses a lot of memory--enough that if you have any other pages open they are likely to be forced out of cache, which is annoying. Worse, there's a good chance that it will run iPad Safari out of memory completely and cause it to crash. If it actually did something useful, there might be some excuse for this, but for most blogs the OnSwipe theme isn't more readable than the theme the blog author picked, and the OnSwipe them has horrible scrolling performance. (It apparently is handling scrolling itself via JavaScript, overriding the native scrolling in the browser, so the result is the scrolling is jerky and doesn't feel like any other scrolling on the iPad). Hence, I have concluded it is malware, because it provides no benefit to the user, and often provides harm (such as browser crashing), and neither the user reading the page nor the blog author whose blog it is on consented specifically to it (any consent was buried in some wordpress terms and conditions saying they could mess with your blog if they wanted to).

libria 15y ago

Of the 30k they're planning to lay off, they may want to whitelist a few network security guys.