This week, we are seeing a few reports from anxious bloggers that their blogs are redirecting to mysterious URLs containing the domain "deplayer.net". This is somewhat reminiscent of the "searchinvented.com / smashingfeeds.com" hijacks seen during January 2010, and to the "sendptp.com" hijacks seen during February 2010.
Early reports mention the "Real time hit counter" gadget, seen by some as the "Halifax 2011" countdown gadget, or possibly the "Halloween 2010" countdown gadget, as being the gadget most successfully removed.
It's also possible that the "falling snow" and "Tweet This" gadget code has been upgraded to redirect to "deplayer.net". We also have reports of an "ITunes" accessory, a "Martin Luther King Jr Quotes" gadget, and a "yoga journal" / "yoga pose" gadget being involved this month.
As always, I'll caution you to be wary of any third party gadgets. It appears from some comments received that there is protective code in these newest gadgets, which aggressively blocks use of the "Page Elements" gadget GUI removal. If you try to hit the "Remove" button, or hit "Layout" from the dashboard link, and you are redirected, you have 2 choices.
After removing the offending code, don't forget to clear cache, before testing your change!
It appears that some malware may be included in some gadgets installed by the Blogger "Add a Gadget" wizard. If you find removing any Blogger gadgets to provide you any relief, please report your findings in my article Some Hijack Malware Is Being Claimed To Be Blogger Provided. Your details, provided there, would be greatly appreciated.
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Early reports mention the "Real time hit counter" gadget, seen by some as the "Halifax 2011" countdown gadget, or possibly the "Halloween 2010" countdown gadget, as being the gadget most successfully removed.
It's also possible that the "falling snow" and "Tweet This" gadget code has been upgraded to redirect to "deplayer.net". We also have reports of an "ITunes" accessory, a "Martin Luther King Jr Quotes" gadget, and a "yoga journal" / "yoga pose" gadget being involved this month.
As always, I'll caution you to be wary of any third party gadgets. It appears from some comments received that there is protective code in these newest gadgets, which aggressively blocks use of the "Page Elements" gadget GUI removal. If you try to hit the "Remove" button, or hit "Layout" from the dashboard link, and you are redirected, you have 2 choices.
- Use "the Page Elements" wizard from a browser / computer which blocks scripts from all third party domains, outside the Blogger / Google world.
- Access the Layout "Edit HTML" wizard directly, and remove the entry for the HTML / JavaScript gadget directly from the template code.
After removing the offending code, don't forget to clear cache, before testing your change!
It appears that some malware may be included in some gadgets installed by the Blogger "Add a Gadget" wizard. If you find removing any Blogger gadgets to provide you any relief, please report your findings in my article Some Hijack Malware Is Being Claimed To Be Blogger Provided. Your details, provided there, would be greatly appreciated.
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Comments
"Page Elements" is a Blogger wizard. It's a tab from the dashboard Layout link, and can be accessed from the navbar link "Customise".
thanks for all your help!
Joe
You shouldn't even need to mess with the HTML code or basic layout if you simply delete the most recent widget.
Thanks for posting this helpful info!!
You're going to have to set all Blogger / Google domains as Trusted, then hope that the malware that you need to remove isn't part of the Blogger Gadgets library.
Albert
www.humanitymatters.org is my real site please let me know if I am still attacked?
My blog was being redirected to another site (very annoyingly) and I traced it to the "real time hit counter". Rather than edit the HTML, I went to the page elements page & found the offending widget, but when I edited it (to remove it) the page went to the redirect site aarrgggghhh. Solution :
Let it redirect
then backspace (to take you back)
right click hit stop (now doesn't redirect)
hit the delete widget box
Gone !!
yee haa ..... what a pain !!
joe
www.Joe-cannon.blogspot.com
@moviefreak; I couldn't get to my blog the usual way either, so I took the back route from my google account, which lets you see a list of all your blogs an stuff. you can edit your settings from there.
I'm glad this helped, so thanks for posting this :)
Thanks for this article!
littleapplebigapplebites.blogspot.com