On Friday, some Sedo users received a malware warning on their browsers when they tried to access Sedo’s website. In addition, Google added a warning on search results pages. I wrote an article urging users to be cautious when using Sedo.
After internal technicians examined the website, Sedo issued a statement later on in the afternoon to tell people that there were no malware threats, and this afternoon, the company made a more comprehensive announcement, giving the “all clear” to customers:
“Sedo would like to follow up on security concerns raised this past Friday by visitors attempting to access the Sedo.com and Sedo.co.uk websites using either the Firefox or Chrome web browsers. Despite the warnings displayed by Google and their browser partners, a thorough review and investigation of the Sedo marketplace, domain parking, and website generally showed no signs of a security breach or any violation of the integrity of the Sedo services or user privacy. Let us be clear: at no point was malware distributed via Sedo.
What we did discover is that Google’s security warning Friday was likely triggered by code initiated by our website banner rotation system (a third party software). Although this software code did not create a security risk, Google misinterpreted the situation and wrongly issued the security warning. All warnings have now been removed, and the situation is completely resolved. Sedo’s technical teams are working with our banner partners to avoid future false alarms, and therefore our website ad server system—including the news section on the MySedo login page—is still down for maintenance. We appreciate your patience. “
