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.

Re:Whois Entries Not Indicative of a Hack

[Megane]

Wow, I thought that trick stopped working like four years or so ago. I even had one of those kind of entries, but took it out when the search stopped showing them.

Looks like these clowns aren't just limiting themselves to Google...

AOL.COM.IS.N0T.AS.1337.AS.GULLI.COM
AOL.COM.IS.0WNED.BY.SUB7.NET
AOL.COM.CANDICE-CHAMBERLAIN.COM
AOL.COM.AINT.GOT.AS.MUCH.FREE.PORN.AS.SECZ.COM
AOL.COM

Google Web Accelerator

[Message Board]

Last night, Google Web Accelerator was accelerating just fine... except for the fact that when I tried to make it proxy google.com it told me that the web site wasn't available, and to try search Google for the site. Needless to say, that didn't work either.

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

[Gollum]

In fact, I think they registered com.net, and simply created a wildcard DNS result for anything under that, which points to their search page.

As the parent says, it is common behaviour for browsers to try appending common TLD's to the end of an URL that is not found verbatim. When Google went away, the browser appended .net to google.com, and ended up at *.com.net.

A bug that people seem to be ignoring is that whatever browser is shown in the screenshot did not show the correct URL after the .net was appended, but left the original URL in the location bar.

Re:SoGoSearch didn't hijack

[Dun Malg]

com.net, net.com, etc should be reserved.

A better idea is to not have such brain-dead DWIM "features" in the browser. What kind of stupidity is it to blindly append a TLD to a URL that already ends in a valid TLD?

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.

Has it gotten to this point yet?

[fwice]

Are people really this dependant on google that when there is an outage, people really flip out?

I mean, there are other search engines.
Other email services.
Other mapping things.

Seriously, what were people doing a couple years ago? If your life is that in tuned to google, maybe its time to 'log off' (and pardon the cliche).

So the DNS was down...

[Karakth]

Just 216.239.57.99 it.

Google didn't cash 400,000 US$ during that time

[astrab]

According to gigaom.com, Google acknowledges having suffered a 'DNS blackout' for two hours (aprox) this past Saturday, and users couldn't access the search engine.

During Q1 2005, Google cashed $657 million by showing sponsored links on search results. This means 300,000 US$ per hour. Taking into account that this issue happened on Saturday (less users), we can estimate the 'non-revenue' figure in 400,000 US$ aprox, without considering other non-working services like Google AdSense, which probably suffered problems during this time.

http://google-blog.dirson.com/post.new/0260/

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.

This hit Microsoft as well

[Nichotin]

Didn't anyone notice?

With google down..

[kun]

With google down who's going to raise my children!?