Google Sync Clobbers Chrome Browsers

If you use Chrome along with Google's Sync, you may have noticed something strange Monday: normally stable Chrome crashing. An article at Wired (excerpt below) explains why: "Late Monday, Google engineer Tim Steele confirmed what developers had been suspecting. The crashes were affecting Chrome users who were using another Google web service known as Sync, and that Sync and other Google services — presumably Gmail too — were clobbered Monday when Google misconfigured its load-balancing servers. ... Steele wrote in a developer discussion forum, a problem with Google's Sync servers kicked off an error on the browser, which made Chrome abruptly shut down on the desktop. 'It's due to a backend service that sync servers depend on becoming overwhelmed, and sync servers responding to that by telling all clients to throttle all data types,' Steele said. That 'throttling' messed up things in the browser, causing it to crash."

Comments

Sync was sunk

[smittyoneeach]

Sync was sunk
By a bristly punk.
Having less facial drag,
He'd've more clearly thunk.
Burma Shave

Why I will never use the "cloud" exclusively

[crazyjj]

Fine as *one* backup location, fine for non-critical data and apps, fine for anything that won't be particularly missed if it goes offline for a while.

Shit for anything important.

Re:Why I will never use the "cloud" exclusively

[marcello_dl]

I think the most important piece of the summary is not that the googly cloudy system failed (clouds fail, reality different than spin, is it still news?).

It is that it may be possible to crash chrome from remote, proof of concept exploits may follow soon.

Re:Why I will never use the "cloud" exclusively

[kllrnohj]

It is that it may be possible to crash chrome from remote, proof of concept exploits may follow soon.

1) Getting it to crash doesn't mean you can actually exploit it. There are boatloads of crashes that you can't exploit

2) The only way you could crash it in this manner in the first place would be to re-target the sync endpoint to get Chrome to connect to a different remote server for syncing, which would be a huge security vulnerability in the first place.

Re:I miss Firefox in this regard

[The MAZZTer]

What you are seeing has nothing to do with sync and would happen even if you turned sync off. Chrome is just starting up as quickly as it can and only loading bookmarks when it can get to it.

Re:I miss Firefox in this regard

[Anonymous Coward]

The real advantage of Firefox sync is that is encrypted on the client side, so Mozilla is unable to read your data, not the same with Chrome

That's what I thought too, but apparently Chrome can do that too - it's just not on by default. Go to Settings > Advanced sync settings > Encrypt all synced data.

And Yet

[JustOK]

No one is talking about slashdot being down last night.

Line by line debugging reveals...

[Sasayaki]

//try
//{
tabs.sync();
//}
//catch
//{
//printf("Oops, cloud sync failed. Terribly sorry, Captain. We'll fail gracefully and just make do without.");
//}
// James, I fucking told you not to use try-catch statements, they're too slow. The code works and a cloud failure is basically impossible (five nines, baby) so just chill, will you?
// P.S. /* comment */ is for chumps.

Re:Firefox + Windows = Opera

[maxwell demon]

$ tr "Firefox Opera" "Opera Midori" < parentcomment

That gives:

Itisrrmsithririiiris mrispgnpapcintioi blrmsiwpthiOpira Mi niWpnd wsithitig ibry ndiWpnd ws'istindiidibiipnidimigr.iThrioi blrmsiI'vriiunipnt ihivribrrninumri usirn ughithitiI'vrihidit idi oiOpira Mi nimyiWpnd wsimichpnriindig it idorii.iEvriy nripsiaimplpiiiwpthithriusuilidpskio undpngithitiWpnd wsic nspdrisim iripmo itintithinisrivpcpngiusriirvrntsisuchiisim usriclpcks,irtc.iH wrvri,ipnithricisri aiOpira Miptisrrmsivriyimuchiw isr.idoriii--in ioi blrm.i(Yrs,iillithriusuilisusorctsisuchiisirMtrnsp ns,iolugpns,imilwiir/vpiusiscinsirtc.ihivribrrnidriltiwpth.)

I'm not sure what this is intended to tell me, though.