Google DNS Glitch Caused Outage

An anonymous reader writes "Google suffered a pretty long outage saturday evening, due to some DNS glitches, according to company spokesperson. All Google services were down for a while, including Gmail and Google AdSense. There seems to be a DNS hijack, as some screen grabs show that Google.com was redirecting to another site, SoGoSearch.com. "

Comments

Whois Entries Not Indicative of a Hack

[LogicX]

Everyone keeps freaking out because when they run a whois query they get this:

GOOGLE.COM.SUCKS.FIND.CRACKZ.WITH.SEARCH.GULLI.C OM
GOOGLE.COM.HAS.LESS.FREE.PORN.IN.ITS.SEARCH.ENGI NE .THAN.SECZY.COM
GOOGLE.COM

This is NOT at ALL indicative of a hack.

All this means is that gulli.com chose to register a DNS server with their registrar called 'GOOGLE.COM.SUCKS.FIND.CRACKZ.WITH.SEARCH.GULLI.CO M' instead of ns1.gulli.com -- to do EXACTLY what they just did -- got your attention.

Simmer down everyone. If you whois ANY major site you'll see similar things. (Just try Microsoft.com)

Re:Whois Entries Not Indicative of a Hack

[A beautiful mind]

Also the Screenshots are just about BROWSER GUESSES. The screenshots show http://www.google.com.net!

You know, it's what happens when the browser can't find the given domain name (dns servers are down), that it tries www.google.com.com, then www.google.com.net and it happened to be already taken by the site in the screenshots.

SoGoSearch didn't hijack

[Anonymous Coward]

SoGoSearch didn't hijack Google's DNS. They registered a domain name google.com.net. Because the browser couldn't find google.com it tried as google.com.net. It has nothing to do with them hijacking any DNS.

I do think it is unethical to register a domain such as google.com.net if you are not Google, but that is a different thing.

Re:SoGoSearch didn't hijack

[ryanjensen]

Thing is, they didn't register "google.com.net" - they registered "com.net". The "google" part is called a wildcard, and any "*.com.net" would go to SoGoSearch. (See this report about yahoo.sex.com).

The real problem lies in web browsers that append ".net" to a domain name when the .com version cannot be accessed.

Re:SoGoSearch didn't hijack

[autocracy]

It's definitely a browser problem. The resolver doesn't do that... the browser makes the other requests after being told NXDOMAIN by the resolver. So, while the issue comes from getting the wrong DNS response, it's because the browser asked the wrong questions thereafter. This also doesn't have to do with search directives. I'm sure there's something you're saying that I'm calling differently than you mean, but it's still an issue of the browser in this case.

Not a hijack

[Kip]

They were just taking advantage of browser behavior.

www.google.com.net leads to sogosearch.com

When a browser fails to resolve an address, they will try adding .net and .com to the end of the address on the assumption maybe the user forgot to add it.

Re:It's time to end our dependence on google

[dfjghsk]

Google with it's 85% market share. Google with its total control of the web search market.

Except, its market share is only 35%.. which is far from a monopoly. (For comparison, yahoo is at 32%)

Only here on slashdot does everyone think google completely controls the web search market.