Possible firewall issue.

[MapperGuy]

Just tried accessing Metabunk from a link saved on my laptop.
My antivirus software blocked it, declaring it to be a Phishing site. Tried several times got same result each time.

link was to: https://www.metabunk.org/home/

I was able to access metabunk from a link to a specific article on here, no problem getting to that article, then logging on.
But if I click on the "Home" at the top left of the page I get the same antivirus block.

EDIT, and now 30 minutes later, I don't get that message and go straight to the home page.
Something on my end? or some hacker messing with the website?

 

[JMartJr]

Similar happened to me, could not open home page, could open other pages in my history. Everything is working now.

 

[John J.]

Just tried accessing Metabunk from a link saved on my laptop.
My antivirus software blocked it,

Same with me, yesterday and today.
Recently changed from McAfee to Norton- fed up with McAfee pop-ups telling me I can fix "registry issues", which I haven't noticed impairing the running of my computer, if I shell out more for some upgrade, but Norton is much the same. Like polite blackmail, really.

In Norton (my edition anyway) click on "Settings" (cogwheel icon), then click on "Intrusion Prevention".
You will see 3 clickable headings near the top of the window, Settings, Connection attempts and Exclusions.
Click on Exclusions, then click on "Add Exclusion". A box appears where you can add your copy-and-pasted Metabunk URL, then click "Add", job done.

 

[MonkeeSage]

Did the web protection thingy give any indication of a specific file (e.g., somefile.js), or a URL other than the metabunk link, or a name for the threat it thinks it detected? There may be some specific file or a 3rd party content deliver network it doesn't like.

 

[Mick West]

My antivirus software blocked it,

What software?

 

[Mick West]

Similar happened to me, could not open home page, could open other pages in my history. Everything is working now.

Is this just Windows built-in antivirus? Or what?

 

[Mick West]

Google doesn't find anything. It might (hopefully) just be some bad data in the anti-virus software that got fixed.

 

[John J.]

Did the web protection thingy give any indication of a specific file (e.g., somefile.js), or a URL other than the metabunk link

My AV gave some generic warning about risk of Phishing from use of this site.
I clicked the "report false detection" option (or whatever it's called) which reports back to the manufacturer.

 

[MonkeeSage]

The online URL checkers from BitDefender, Norton show the site as safe.

https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/consumer/link-checker/safe

https://safeweb.norton.com/report?url=https://www.metabunk.org/home/


The McAfee one shows "Minimal Risk"

https://sitelookup.mcafee.com/en/feedback/url

I found a blog post where the McAfee firewall was blocking a site even though it was rated as "Minimal Risk" because the IP itself was categorized as phishing.

https://www.manningmarketing.com/articles/mcafee-firewall-blocking-website-when-url-is-minimal-risk/

But none the 3 IPs from the A records are marked as phishing there currently. Not sure if those A records are static or might change/rotate.

Currently from my computer these are the resolved IPs for www.metabunk.org:
104.26.10.98
104.26.11.98
172.67.72.97

 

[JMartJr]

Is this just Windows built-in antivirus? Or what?

Avast One, it says here...

 

[Mick West]

The McAfee one shows "Minimal Risk"

https://sitelookup.mcafee.com/en/feedback/url

It gives that to everything, including itself

 

[Mick West]

But none the 3 IPs from the A records are marked as phishing there currently. Not sure if those A records are static or might change/rotate.

Currently from my computer these are the resolved IPs for www.metabunk.org:
104.26.10.98
104.26.11.98
172.67.72.97

Metabunk sits behind Cloudflare (as do 20-30% of all sites); it's possible there was a temporary issue with Cloudflare.

 

[Mick West]

Thank you to everyone for reporting this! I appreciate getting timely reports so I can fix problems as quickly as possibly (if it turns out to be a problem)

 

[Smythe Bacchus]

VirusTotal scan of https://metabunk.org/home reports:

"No security vendors flagged this URL as malicious"

 

[MapperGuy]

What software?

Norton360

There was a message displayed with 'more information' and it said some 'site' with a 3 letter name (RIM maybe???) reported it as a phishing site.

 

[Hougenai]

I'm a bit late on this, but I had a similar issue mid afternoon on saturday and again this morning (monday)
Using the stored shortcut https://www.metabunk.org/home/ resulted in AVG suggesting it was a phishing site. The same link, from a google search, resulted in the same message. However, a link from my history https://www.metabunk.org/whats-new/ allowed immediate and full access.

 

[JMartJr]

@Mick West This is happening again to me this morning. I can come directly to other pages, but www.metabunk.org gives me this:

If you are sufficiently certain it is a false detection, please let me know and I'll click that "Report False Detection" button!

 

[Mick West]

Phishing site detection probably relies on user reports, so it might be that people who don't like Metabunk have been reporting it as a phishing site to try to stop people coming here.

Avast is a bit notorious for false positives, and that seems to be what this is. All the various in-depth scanners find no issue.

I would appreciate it if people could report these as false detections, which should eventually fix the issue.

 

[MapperGuy]

Phishing site detection probably relies on user reports, so it might be that people who don't like Metabunk have been reporting it as a phishing site to try to stop people coming here.

Avast is a bit notorious for false positives, and that seems to be what this is. All the various in-depth scanners find no issue. View attachment 84009


I would appreciate it if people could report these as false detections, which should eventually fix the issue.

Same problem for me again.
Norton360 under information about the block says the threat was: "Detected by SafeWeb"
just the Home page is being blocked, links to pages inside work just fine.

 

[JMartJr]

I would appreciate it if people could report these as false detections, which should eventually fix the issue.

Done.

 

[Mick West]

Same problem for me again.
Norton360 under information about the block says the threat was: "Detected by SafeWeb"
just the Home page is being blocked, links to pages inside work just fine.

Norton SafeWeb says it's safe, and there are no community reviews. Hopefully it's just a temporary thing.

 

[Mick West]

And I installed their Chrome extension, and it seems fine:

 

[JMartJr]

FWIW, not seeing such issues on my Android phone. Shared as I do not know enough to guess which data point might create an AH-HA!

 

[Smythe Bacchus]

Google Safe Browsing (automatically used by Google Chrome and other browsers) https://www.metabunk.org/home report:

"No unsafe content found"

 

[Smythe Bacchus]

urlscan.io for https://metabunk.org/home reports:

"No classification"

 

[Smythe Bacchus]

URLVOID scan of metabunk.org reports zero detections.