Google flags London Stock Exchange site for malware

Google has temporarily flagged up the London Stock Exchange's website as a malware danger, due to a third-party advertiser on that site hosting malicious software.

Google has temporarily flagged up the London Stock Exchange's website as a malware danger. Photo credit: jam_90s on Flickr

The issue came up on Sunday, a spokesperson for the London Stock Exchange (LSE) told ZDNet UK. "We were previously carrying an advert from a third-party provider," a spokesperson said on Monday. "That advert, if you clicked through to the third-party website, had a flag up as being a virus or something similar. We've obviously taken the advert down off our website."

According to Google's Safe Browsing diagnostic page, a visit to a page on the LSE site on Saturday resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The malware was hosted on a site called stripli.com, while two others — unanimis.co.uk and borsaitaliana.it — appeared to be "functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site", Google said.

Google stressed that the LSE site was not itself hosting malware. It also noted that the stripli.com-hosted malware had also caused similar problems with other sites, including reviewcentre.com and viamichelin.com.

The LSE spokesperson said the bourse had spoken to Google on Sunday and was told that "they'll be taking that flag down as soon as possible".

The last month has presented the LSE with multiple technical mishaps. The exchange's migration to a new Linux platform caused problems for brokers in mid-February, and a week later a more serious glitch caused all trading to be put on hold for hours. In November, another LSE trading platform went down for two hours.