# Question about McAfee Site Advisor 2.9-backdoor vulnerability?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-mcafee-site-advisor-2-9-backdoor-vulnerability/483684
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [January 30, 2009, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-mcafee-site-advisor-2-9-backdoor-vulnerability/483684 "2009-01-30T04:33:50Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2009, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-mcafee-site-advisor-2-9-backdoor-vulnerability/483684/1 "2009-01-30T04:33:50Z")

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I’ve Googled the following situation, and found nothing on the scenario in question, so I guess I could chalk it up to paranoia, but anyway. I use McAfee Site Advisor as a plugin for Firefox 3.0.5 to warn me of potentially dangerous sites, been perfectly happy with it for several years now on my old machine.

I got my new computer last October, and installed version 2.9. The odd thing is how often my firewall will catch the .exe (McSACore.exe) either requesting a firewall exception, or some outside agency/address will be asking permission in (however that works). After doing so for about a dozen different IPs, the whole thing started bugging me a little, and I went in and locked down all exceptions (about 82 of them now), and of course now all site advise icons are grey for any sites I visit. My worry obviously is that some nefarious hacker types might have found a way to invade my system using this plugin. I’ll even get requests when Firefox is not even active at all and I’m doing something else.

All I want is for someone to tell me that’s it’s cool, that’s how Site Advisor works, and it doesn’t present a security risk.