When I try to visit the U.S. International Trade Commission’s web site, I receive an “avast! Warning A Trojan Horse was Found!” pop-up warning, claiming to have encountered the following virus: JS:Small-C [trj] . The U.S. ITC is a Federal government agency (though I suppose it’s web site might be compromised just like any other by hackers). Still, I can’t help but wonder if this might be a false positive. The web site is www.usitc.gov . Perhaps someone else might try visiting it (with avast! running, of course!) and see if it blocks the same virus. Also, perhaps avast! staff might determine if this is a false positive. Hundreds and hundreds of people use this web site, as I need to do, so this is definitely a significant inconvenience.
I just sent them an email: Hello, I’m an Avast! Anti-virus user, and an active member of their respective user forum, located here: forum.avast.com
It has come to the attention of one of our members, that your site may have some malicious software on it, more specifically a script that is causing a Trojan virus to be downloaded to visitors of your site. Here is a code sample:
(I have removed the script to make it non-active)
I ask that you please look into this, as it seems that someone has hacked the site.
Wow. Thanks. That was quick and very useful feedback. I discovered that if I jump directly to downstream links from the home page, I don’t encounter the virus, so as far as I can tell, it appears limited to the home page. That was good research. Incidentally, who did you write at the ITC about this? The webmaster? The Secretary’s Office? All the best.
It was listed under their “contact” page. Hopefully that’s the best place to go, but if it’s not, we can only hope that someone will get a clue and fix the problem.
Aside from the scripts you showed, there are a bunch of hidden DIV tags after the closing html tag.
These go to some strange domains also, so those unprotected may get some objectionable pop-ups pages. The irony of being the International Trade Commission looks like one of the DIV tags trying to sell some brushes.
