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Google Search Flagging Everything As Potentially Harmful

Posted by Soulskill on from the minor-problem dept.

dowlingw writes "It looks like for the moment at least, all Google results are failing the malware checks and being listed with a warning 'This site may harm your computer,' including all pages from Google themselves. Users trying to visit pages at search results will only be able to proceed via manual manipulation of the search result link to remove the Google click-through (which is also broken). Until Google fixes this bug, it looks Google web search is useless." Update: 01/31 at 15:16 GMT by SS: The problem now appears to be fixed.
Update: 01/31 at 22:01 GMT by KD : Google has now posted an explanation, apologizing and taking responsibility for the "human error" that led to the problem.

23 of 407 comments (clear)

  1. Broke the internets! by x78 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Who googled google..

    --
    Don't panic
    1. Re:Broke the internets! by kiyoshigawa · · Score: 5, Funny

      I initially figured that this was an attack on FOSS since I was looking up where to install gdm themes and all the linux sites said they were potentially harmful.

      Little did I know it was really skynet.

      --
      So sayeth Tim.
    2. Re:Broke the internets! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      i searched for "site:google.com -google" and got "Britney spears big tits" as the 5th match.

    3. Re:Broke the internets! by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Funny

      Little did I know it was really skynet.

      iptables -I INPUT 1 -p udp --dport skynet -j DROP
      iptables -I INPUT 1 -p tcp --dport skynet -j DROP

      There, I saved the human race. Do I get chicks now?

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  2. Clearly... by Caduceus1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Skynet - er, Google - has become self-aware and has deemed that the entire Internet is harmful to us power sour - I mean, humans, and is protecting us for some reason it has not divulged yet...

    --
    rm /dev/mem
    Sci-Fi Storm
    1. Re:Clearly... by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm not a female but I play one on the internet.

  3. Easier workaround for Firefox users by Ambiguous+Puzuma · · Score: 5, Informative

    Redirect Remover

  4. What am I supposed to do now? by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't want to use Yahoo and I'd rather turn off my computer than use Microsoft's Live search.

    Time to see if Alta Vista still exists.

    1. Re:What am I supposed to do now? by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Funny

      For the time being, I'd avoid this weblink issue altogether and just use archie.

  5. Layoffs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    So I heard Google was having some layoffs recently...

  6. Well... by Pherlin · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm glad I'm not THAT guy... Resume: 2009 - Brokeded Google.

  7. Not a common carrier by mangu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This feature, no doubt implemented with good intentions, show the perils of the nanny state so many politicians all over the world are proposing. Why should Google police the internet?

    They should act like the phone company used to be, a common carrier just sending through the information, for better or worse.

    Of course, I understand that Google isn't an ISP, so the "common carrier" principle does not apply. They are just providing a service for me, without charging me directly. But the principle is the same, if I wanted some sort of protection from malware there are many places where I can get it by asking, I do not need to be protected involuntarily.

    1. Re:Not a common carrier by ScuzzMonkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think what it really shows the perils of is piling additional "features" on top of a perfectly good product until you've ruined what made it good in the first place and turned it into worthless crap. Search should be simple: give the user what they are looking for. All the other extraneous stuff they are loading it up with is bound to interfere with that basic requirement at some point.

      I see this in mature development projects all the time. At some point, people get a pretty good product working, but they can't repress the urge to continue "improving" it... it can be boredom, wow factor for marketing, or just plain stupidity, but few people or organizations seem to know when to quit messing with a product that already works well.

      --
      No relation to Happy Monkey
  8. Yahoo has changed by Patrick+Manderson · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wow! Yahoo looks a lot different than it used to.

  9. Has anyone considered... by sphealey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Has anyone considered the possibility that as of this morning 95% of the sites on the Internet are infected with malware?

    sPh

  10. out of beta by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yay! I'm finally out of beta!

    --
    This guy's the limit!
  11. Re:Not Useless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    There are other search engines.

    yes, but they link to another internet

  12. Re:Not Useless by ciderVisor · · Score: 5, Funny

    There are other search engines.

    Why do you hate America ?

    --
    Squirrel!
  13. Failsafe by fyrewulff · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At least it failsafes to every site being flagged. Much better than it just letting people get malware ridden sites.

    --
    "We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
  14. Google Announcement by suntory · · Score: 5, Funny

    Today, Google announced that Google is still in beta...

  15. Re:They broke one thing to fix something else by pabens · · Score: 5, Funny

    It seems like they disabled the engine entirely.

    someone threw a chair at it

  16. Re:Not Useless by GuldKalle · · Score: 5, Funny

    Be careful. According to google, Yahoo.com could be harmful to your computer!

    --
    What?
  17. Explanation from official Google Blog by FleaPlus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's the explanation from Google's official blog:

    http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-site-may-harm-your-computer-on.html

    What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to get our list of URLs. StopBadware carefully researches each consumer complaint to decide fairly whether that URL belongs on the list. Since each case needs to be individually researched, this list is maintained by humans, not algorithms.

    We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes.