Has Auctiva been hacked!

[coxengines]

Auctiva is slow and it is allegedly for "maintenance" as they are rotating servers.

However, when using "Firefox" as browser, I get all sorts of warnings and it will not let me access all my pages.

This is the message I get:

This web site at www.auctiva.com has been reported as an attack site and has been blocked based on your security preferences.

When using IE, I can access my pages but text will be thrown around in the description when re-saving or I cannot save spacing/line breaks.

I guess "maintenance" seems like a good spin 🙂

Cheers
Bernie

[coxengines]

Try Googling "auctiva". Top of the search pile with this message:

Auctiva
This site may harm your computer.
eBay auction software providing eBay auction management tools, free templates, free image hosting, online scheduling, and an easy to use one page listing ...
www.auctiva.com/ - Similar pages

Cheers
Bernie

[dipmicro]

I just noticed that as well. Google's Chrome gives me big stop sign with "Warning: Visiting this site may harm your computer!" and was coming here to see if anyone noticed.

[dipmicro]

Actually Google Chrome now freaks on all my listings, because they contain Auctiva showcase.

And so it does on your listings Bernie. How is your sales today?

Seems this is affecting everyone who uses Auctiva. Here is a security warning by Firefox from Google:


What is the current listing status for auctiva.com?

Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer.

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 2 time(s) over the past 90 days.

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 45 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 5 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-02-21, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2009-02-21.

Malicious software includes 6 scripting exploit(s), 6 trojan(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 10 new processes on the target machine.

Malicious software is hosted on 2 domain(s), including luckffxi.com/, auctlva.com/.

1 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including me9x.cn/.

This site was hosted on 3 network(s) including AS16509 (AMAZON), AS174 (COGENT), AS14744 (INTERNAP).

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?

Over the past 90 days, auctiva.com did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.

Has this site hosted malware?

No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

How did this happen?

In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.

[coxengines]

Yeah, I saw the warning breakdown earlier today.

It does not affect our listings unless one clicks on an Auctiva link, and there is not much chance of that happening.

24-hrs sales are @ just over $900 which is almost double what we usually do; ergo, today was a superior sales day.

Listing, however, is a P.I.B. and I gave up after 5 or 6 new listings.

Cheers
Bernie

[coxengines]

This from autiva support. Are they taking lessons from eBay? 🙂

Hello,

We are currently experiencing an issue with anti-virus warnings being received by some of our users. Our engineering team is currently working on a resolution to this issue. Please use the following link to be taken to a thread on our community forum where we will be posting updates:

http://community.auctiva.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1081020411/m/11910151

Due to the number of support cases that are being generated becuase of this issue, this is a bulk message.

Sincerely,

Todd K.

[coxengines]

And this:

We have removed what was causing that warning to be displayed from our systems but that warning is still showing up because we need to be rescanned by Google, which we are going to do as soon as we finish up the work we're doing.

Which brings me to the question "What on earth did they have running on their site that was causing this?"

I have found eBay running running miniature, almost invisible, scripts in their emails but at least they don't trigger the virus protection software.:-D

Cheers
Bernie

[dipmicro]

24-hrs sales are @ just over $900 ...

hmm, is this on xenalook account only or on several accounts altogether? How do you get $900 on $2~$10 items during one day? 😉

[recped]

Which brings me to the question "What on earth did they have running on their site that was causing this?"

It's all the tracking cookies, affiliate links and various other junk which enables them to offer "free" services.

[coxengines]

hmm, is this on xenalook account only or on several accounts altogether? How do you get $900 on $2~$10 items during one day?

"Xenalook" account only 🙂 However, yesterday was exceptional with $900. Our record was just over $1,600 in 24 hrs. Unfortunately, that does not happen too often (:

Copy and paste from "selling Manager" from a couple of minutes ago (formatting removed)

C $376.07
Last 24 hours

C $3,123.18
Last 7 days

C $13,763.94
Last 30 days

If you look at the amount of feedback left for us per month, around 800, (and only 80% of buyers leave feedback) and begin doing the math.....

Yup, we average about $450/day in sales. Statistical average price per item (according to our eBay sales stats) converts to CA$ $7.60. Multiple purchases of one item = only one feedback. Buyers purchasing multiples is the norm for our product.

That quickly adds up to $150k+/year. Add a buck a package shipping profit and it's a nice little venture. Probably a good reason you don't hear us complaining too much on the boards 🙂

Cheers
Bernie

[dipmicro]

Bernie, do you use Omniture traffic reports? What is your average number of daily Unique Visitors?

[coxengines]

To my shame, I have to confess that I do not use any traffic reports at all (except keyword research).

I look at our "Selling Magager" once or twice a day just to cheer me up with good #'s. The daily one I don't take too seriously, the weekly one shows a trend and the monthly one is my guidance.

So, in answer to your question, I have no clue 🙂

Cheers
Bernie

[coxengines]

I just culled this from our eBay traffic report link. Is that what you were looking for? The #'s don't mean much to me as I'm after $$'s 🙂

Cheers
Bernie

46,472 Page views in January 2009
A page view is counted every time a visitor views your listings, a page within your store, and other pages tracked for you by eBay.

7,997 “Visits” in January 2009
A visit is defined as a sequence of consecutive pages viewed by a single visitor for 30 minutes without a break.

22,044 Storefront Home Pages views in January 2009
This report displays the number of times your storefront home page was viewed.

[thescrapbookpalace]

HI, JUST WONDERING IF ANYBODY HAS AN UPDATE ON THE AUCTIVA SITUATION?

[dipmicro]

Is that what you were looking for?

Basically, yes, thank you.

The #'s don't mean much to me as I'm after $$'s

The $$ scale with those numbers. You increase those, you increase $$ 😉

In my niche one needs many listings. My 700 listings (5% auctions) brought in 22 February days 8301s PV, 2395 UVs, 2632 Store Home PVs. Scale that to 30 days, get 11300 PV, 3260 UV, 3600 home PVs.

The comparison with your numbers tells me that:

1) you have much better success selling to visitors. $1.62 per visitor, while mine $0.9/visitor.

2) people browse more in your store (46k PV / 8k UV = 5.75 page/visitor - vs mine 3.47).

3) Extremely high number of views of your store home tells me that you do a good job bringing them there 😉 While I do poorly or the categories on the side are so descriptive they do not need to go to store home.

Thanks for the numbers and for you time Bernie. I appreciate it.

[coxengines]

Auctiva seems to be "clean" again 🙂

And yes, Roman, I am aware of what traffic represents. What I was trying to say is that, in the absence of comparison data, I don't know if 1,500 daily "hits" is a lot or not.

I guess it's enough to generate a steady stream of sales.

We did, however, a few weeks ago, raise pricing on almost all items between 20 and 50% and noticed the amount of items sold has dropped.

On the other hand, $ sales volume increased slightly so we should be good to go. Same revenue but less items shipped = higher margin per item = current (non-replaceable) inventory lasts longer.

Cheers
Bernie