"Given the huge & justified importance given by Mumsnetters to not "minimising" others' concerns, I feel MNHQ could have done more about this than tell us - effectively - it's all over now & not to worry our pretty little heads."
Hi Grace, and others who have voiced concerns.
I'm sorry you don't feel this has been well handled. We've tried quite hard to walk the fine line between providing information and not causing widespread panic. In between trying to resolve the problems, I've been posting about it throughout the day, trying to provide useful updates and I've encouraged people to ask questions and seek help if they need it. I do hope nothing I said came across as patronising, but if it did I certainly apologise. Obviously we have quite a range of technical ability amongst our users and it's hard to get it right for everybody every time.
When I posted saying that it was all over, it was. The threat had been removed. However because people were still getting the warnings we had to labour the point somewhat that "it's all over". It's true that that didn't necessarily mean it was over for someone who had been adversely impacted by it.
I did post earlier about the ad server. It was our own ad server that was compromised. The software that runs the main Mumsnet site is all custom built, which generally makes it no less vulnerable to attack, but of course it does mean that exploits used against other sites aren't generally applicable against ours. However, we operate a very commonly used ad server and someone was able to exploit a problem with it and consequently altered the legitimate code served up as each ad, appending malicious code to each one. I also explained the ramifications of the attack - every example of it that we looked at was not a drive-by download attack, rather a phising attack, targeting hotmail and facebook, whereby if you clicked an ad you were shown a login page which an unwary user might fill in. I can't say for sure that that's the only possibility, but it's the only one we've actually seen.
Since then there have been people who have had problems which do seem like too much of a coincidence, so perhaps they were caused by this attack on Mumsnet. We can't say for sure. I wish I could be more definitive for you.
Updates being triggered may well be entirely coincidental. After all, when you think how many users Mumsnet has it is likely that some of them are going to be on an update cycle that would have been triggered today regardless. If there is a 1:365 chance of an update on any given day and you have tens of thousands of people then some are going to happen today. The same could be said of them being infected with malware, though I reiterate, I am not saying that it wasn't related to the problems we suffered. Certainly people who went to no other sites and were impacted would reasonably suspect the problem was passed on to them through Mumsnet.
With regard to trust, I think many (most?) users do "trust Mumsnet" in the sense that they trust Mumsnet will keep their information private, that Mumsnet won't sell their details to other people, that Mumsnet won't knowingly use malware, or allow its advertisers or other partners to do so, and so on. That trust is well placed. Unfortunately, Mumsnet has been a victim of a malicious attack on this occasion and that has inadvertently been passed on to our users; that doesn't, or shouldn't, mean that people can't trust Mumsnet. But we are part of great unwashed world wide web though, so we suffer attacks, software and hardware errors, human errors and so on just like everyone else.
Please do remember that though our ads do contain code which executes further code stored and served by third parties. We hope and endeavour to ensure that that code is safe, but it might not be, hence the recommendation to always use up to date malware protection. We only knowingly operate with reliable third parties and if any problems are brought to our attention we address them as quickly as we can.
Please do continue to ask questions until you feel satisfied with our responses; whilst nobody is happy that Mumsnet was attacked in this way we want to do our best to help with the consequences of it. Either post on this thread or email us directly.
For the wider audience, once again I do apologise for any inconvenience that has been caused. We reiterate our advice to use up-to-date anti malware protection on your computer and to post in Geek Stuff if that advice makes no sense!