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Latest MyDoom Variant Gives Google Problems
Devil's BSD writes "It seems like the latest MyDoom worm variant has caused a bit of an Internet storm. Google, at this time (12:28 EDT), is returning 503 errors on all queries submitted from certain locations. The MyDoom variant searches the user's address book for email domains (i.e. @yahoo.com) and searches various engines (such as Google) for email addresses in that domain."
Virus writers want to attack Microsoft or SCO, fine... but this... this is war! YOU DO NOT ATTACK THE GOOGLE!!!
I thought I was going nuts, I've never had google give me problems.
I found it hard to remember the names of other search engines that I could use though.
If MyDoom uses certain search strings, you just dump all such searches? Worse case, just dump any search for anything which looks like an e-mail account?
CNN is on behind me, and they've been talking about nothing but Google's IPO. Seems like really bad timing for Google. :-(
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Google is down ... the world is ending! The beginning of the apocalypse! (I can't even check if I spelled that right without google)
Google going down is the first sign of the apocalypse. Now if my wife asks me for sex (the second sign), I'll know the world is going to end...
503? screw that... why not have a new error number designated specifically for MS infected systems... error 999: The operating system you are using is insecure and has been exploited... you are partially responsible for bringing this server to its knees... Now go in the corner and think about what you've done.
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
is returning 503 errors on all queries submitted from certain locations
Is that geographic locations, IP blocks, or what? I can use Google just fine at the moment, but have heard of trouble in California (I am in Colorado). TFA gives no details. Anyone have answers?
bash: rtfm: command not found
...just use Google's alternate search form...
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
Perhaps I'm simply 'located' better, but I can do regular google searches just fine.
But when I ask for "email slashdot.org" it returns a forbidden search page.
So it looks like Google is primarily stopping searches that are typical of this virus, but they may also have automated filtering that stops searches which are too many from IPs and netblocks. This part is probably something they implemented long ago.
But google is going slower for me today, and sometimes it stalls (some of the frontend machines dropping out a bit more frequently than usual?)
-Adam
Webmasterworld has an interesting thread which details the problems are user agent and locality specific (for me in SoCal IE and Firefox are borked, Konqueror is working, but others report no problem with Mozilla or no problems in certain locals).
How do I keep track of people who are fingering
use mirrors instead:
http://www.google.co.jp/
http://www.google.fr/
http://www.google.se/
http://www.google.fi/
http://www.google.ca/
all above seem to be responsive atleast to me
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
I'm in Mexico and Google is still not working! It is amazing that we're so tied to Google that we forget the others search engines (in fact when I couldn't search into Google I thought "well I'll wait a couple of minutes" instead of using another search engine like Yahoo!)
Free iPods, no trick, no steal, (almost) no pain:
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
I tried google.fr and I saw that it had surrendered to the virus.
has gone to hell.
My coworkers may realize I really don't know anything if I can't google up answers real soon now...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
But here we are at MyDoom.N, which is the 14th virus in a series that requires the user to:
After ignoring 13 previous warnings, I must move from sympathy to malice. For the sake of all humanity, I beg the author(s) of the MyDoom series and other viruses, in your next version, please include the following instructions:
- locate a nearby table lamp with the light on
- remove pants
- break the bulb while it is glowing
- insert testicles into bulb socket
If they're dumb enough to get fooled by MyDoom again, they're dumb enough to get themselves out of the gene pool.They sent out the email to.. not open your email
How amazingly typical.
Just because you disagree doesn't make it offtopic or flamebait.
"You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the OC-3 to boobies.chemist.com, but that's just peanuts to Google. Listen...", and so on.
(After a while the style settles down a bit and it begins to tell you things you really need to know, like the fact that Google has different DNS entries depending on which server you look them up from, which is only a partial solution to the bandwidth problem -- so that despite the DNS tricks, any net imbalance between the packets you send to Google and the packets Google sends back to you, must be surgically removed from your pipe: so every time you type "natalie portman hot grits" into images.google.com, it is vitally important to get a receipt.)
There have been many reports recently of virus writers attempting to blackmail companies. Having this virus, an obvious DDoS attack on Google, happen the same day that Google announced the price of its IPO shares is just what you would expect if the Google didn't pay the blackmail.
I don't know how we'll ever be able to test this hypothesis, but I think that something stinks here.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
... I do not think it means what you think it means.
i.e. is an abbreviation for the Latin id est, "that is". It's a synonym for "in other words", "that is to say", or (sort of) "specifically". It does NOT mean "for example", or "such as". For those expressions, you're looking for the Latin abbreviation e.g. - exempli gratia, which means "for example".
Saying this virus "searches your machine for email domains, i.e. yahoo.com", you're actually saying that it "searches for email domains, in other words yahoo.com". This implies that yahoo.com is the only email domain it searches for (or that you are an idiot, and honestly believe that 'email domains' is synonymous with 'yahoo.com'), which makes it seem like a rather pointless search, to say the least.
I.e./e.g. confusion seems to be increasingly common, which surprises me, because it doesn't seem to me that their meanings are at all similar. It seems rather like confusing the phrases 'In spite of which' and 'since Thursday'. Since Thursday, people still seem to do it.
If you really can't remember whether you mean i.e. or e.g., then just write out 'for example' or 'in other words' in full... it doesn't take that much longer.
Google has a lot of computer scientists and techies, and all they need to do is write a quick regex to match these "banned" searches, slap a 72-hour ban on any IP that's the source of more than, say, 1000 "banned" searches in a day, reply with a static page that says "SOL, your request came from an infected computer, contact your sysadmin" and then start looking for a more fundamental and elegant solution for a long-term fix.
They'll have this patched over in less than 24 hours, for certain.
May we never see th