MOCA website has red alert: ‘reported attack page’

Would-be visitors to the website of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art on Wednesday saw a striking and somewhat scary visual that’s a distinct artifact of the Internet age: a bold warning in maroon and white that the site, which is usually a fount of information about the museum and its vaunted collection of post-World War II art, “has been reported as an attack page” and was being automatically blocked by software security settings.

Clicking on a link on the warning screen led to an explanation from Google. Under the heading “How did this happen?” it said, “In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.”

One option for those getting the warning was “Get me out of here!” Another was “Ignore this warning,” which Culture Monster, despite its ferocious name, was too cautious to attempt.

Instead, we called MOCA, where spokeswoman Nancy Lee said visitors to the site already had alerted the museum. “We’ve been working on it since this morning, but we haven’t been able to fix it yet,” she said at about 4:15 p.m.

The newly launched MOCAtv web channel was unaffected – it’s housed on Google’s own YouTube site.

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