Why is Norton blocking access to my site?

Question

A client is on my case because Norton won't let him (and apparently a few of his customers) see the site. The following report is produced:

I'm familiar with Joomla expoits and have cleaned up many hacked sites. In this case, there's no indication of modified core or template files. Securi and Norton Safe Web both report that the site is clean.

The site is at Bluehost. I'm using a RocketTheme template and I have a few common, well-supported extensions installed:

• JCE
• AcyMailing Starter
• Akeeba Backup

All extensions and the core are up to date.

Web searches have come up oddly fruitless. I'd have thought that this was a common problem (not a false positive, but similar reports due to actual malicious content) considering how often Joomla sites are actually hacked. Thanks for any assistance.

Answer 1

In my years of using Joomla I've never had any antivirus block a site so it's a new one to me.

Here is a checklist of things to try:

Main:

1. Ensure Joomla is up to date
2. Ensure 3rd party extensions are up to date
3. Check the index.php for any odd looking code

---

Local:

Test your site locally

1. Install a Free Trial of Norton (<< official Norton website)
2. Take a backup of your website and install on your localhost

Once done, check to see if Norton start throwing a hissy fit.

If everything works fine on your localhost, then it could possibly be something to do with your hosting provider.

If you have the same issue on your localhost as the live site, then run a scan on your entire Joomla site on your localhost and try installing some security extensions from the JED that could possibly give some insight.