Script Kiddies 2
One of my favorite reads, the San Jose Mercury-News,* has recently redesigned their website to make it more streamlined, modern, and usable (at least, I expect that’s what the consultant told them).
One of their enhancements was a script that spikes my CPU like mad. NotScripts tells me that it is a native SJM script, not a third-party script. In this screengrab of Conky, you can see what happens when I close the Mercury-News tab.
There is no sign that the script is in any way malicious. Running top shows no unexpected processes or activity.
In another oddity, I have to enable scripts from denverpost.com in order for mercurynews.com to work properly, but denverpost.com does not spike my CPU.
As the director said, “Rewrite!”
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*I particularly enjoy the Roadshow column because the columnist is just a damned fine writer.
August 13, 2013 at 1:30 pm
Ah, it’s turned into an infinite download site. Particularly annoying, the ongoing “tweet” and “comment” scroll on the right-hand side. Semi-malicious and outright malicious web design is the norm now, anything to stick the machine/eyeballs to more page loads.
August 13, 2013 at 2:00 pm
That script is called mnginteractive.com; I have it blocked, but it might still be taking up CPU cycles in some form.