On February the 5th Wordpress released version 2.3.3 of their blog software. This release fixed the following issue:

WordPress 2.3.3 is an urgent security release. If you have registration enabled a flaw was found in the XML-RPC implementation such that a specially crafted request would allow a user to edit posts of other users on that blog.

On February the 10th I applied the version 2.3.3 to my site.

Three days later Ubuntu Hardy installed the new firefox 3.0 beta. This version of Firefox works very closely with stopbadware.org to prevent users from accessing malware or badware sites. I found this feature when I used Firefox to visit my own site. I was informed of the fact that my site actively distributes or promotes malware and Firefox will not allow access to it. Disabling one of the security features in Firefox restored the access to my site. I instantly understood that my site was hacked  (again) in the last couple of days.

Trying to find out what was going on I read a lot of information on the stopbadware.org pages. Stopbadware.org is founded by Google so it is not surprising they use Google techniques to decide which sites are badware (or malware). A google search for my site today gives the following result (I also tried the same search on Yahoo, MSN and ASK.COM. Those engines have no problem with my site since they do not try to block access to malware sites):

Doing some more research I found that Google’s webmaster tools will give me an option to let Google do a review of my site. The bad thing I found was that Google does not tell you what is wrong with your site. They only state that there is something wrong. This makes it very hard to debug the site and fix the problem. I ended up going through all the pages and have a look at the source of each.

I found two hidden links. The links were hidden in <noscript> tags, so they were not accessible for the visitors of my webpage, they were just there for search engines to enjoy (I guess the person who inserted the links hopes to gain more attention if his site gets linked to a lot). So I removed the links, did some queries on my database and decided my site was completely clean. Then I asked Google to re-evaluate my site.
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WFMU’s Beware of the the Blog features a great Bollywood video clip. The clip istself is very infectious and will surely get a smile on your face.

I can highly recommend the whole blog site. It features a large number of interresting movies. Highlights include the food triology by Jan Svankmajer and The Complaints Choir of Helsinki

Link.

Boingboing features a very nice picture of a fly wearing eyeglasses. And since it is easier to copy than to write you own below follows a copy of the boingboing article:

National Geographic has a photo of a housefly wearing miniature eyeglasses, which had been “crafted and set in place with a cutting-edge laser technique. The glasses fit snuggly on the fly’s 0.08-inch-wid head.”

The article doesn’t say whether or not the glasses improved the fly’s vision (or whether or not the fly had vision problems to begin with), but they do look rather snazzy.

Link.

I finally have changed the layout! I also changed the way to access the Gallery. It is now embedded. Thanks to the guys at ozgreg for writing the Wordpress plugin and helping me out with some question.

Hope you enjoy it.