Have you ever had your open-source project used as a bait and switch by bad guys? Well, I guess I have offically now.
It all started with a simple little Google Alert (see above). Now, I know that I hadn’t made any change to the open source site in quite some time so I was surprised to see a Google Alert come in for the term “InfustionSoftDotNet”. I clicked through on the link only to find that a SPAM content site, filled with random keywords, links and text appeared to be offering for download a copy of the InfusionSoftDotNet Library.
Why indeed would someone link to a their own hosted version of this library rather than the locations office site at http://infusionsoftdotnet.codeplex.com/ ? Well, by clicking through I found out, for better or worse, what the deal was… They are linking to a downloaded that purports to help install the software and, in small print, will also install a bunch of spyware/adware/malicious software along with the actual software.
Well, at least I’m guessing that you will eventually be able to get the files you where looking for. I couldn’t be sure as once I saw this screen, I immediately terminated the install. Perhaps if I find the time to install on a clean machine that isn’t connected to the ‘Net, I’ll do that and see what other heinous stuff they’ve done to this code before releasing it.
And what really galls me is the even after Penguin, Panda and other Google improvements, this stupid page comes upon page 2 of the results when you search for “InfusionSoftDotNet Library” even with all the nonesense content and links to malicious sofware.
Has anyone else working on an open source project had an issue like this come up? What can be done? If I find some answers, I’ll leave them here on this blog for the benefit of those that haven’t suffered this insult…
At Over The Top and Exhibit A Communications, I've programmed solutions for Google as well as at least one other company that was later acquired by Google.
I've been CTO of an Internet SaaS company and spent my time pretty evenly between guiding the future technical strategy of the company, architecting software solutions for my dev teams, designing and running a data center to service our clients world-wide as well as being a technical evangalist/sales engineer to our media clients large and small.
I've also been Chief Photographer of the Daily Sun/Post newspaper back when it was a 5-day a week daily newspaper.
I also spent a great many years as a beach lifeguardfor the City of San Clemente as well as Jr. Lifeguard instructor and then as it's program coordinator.
Bragging rights
Private Pilot with Instrument rating and proud husband of soon to be 25 years (and counting).
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