Hackers == Terrorists?

July 26, 2004 11:00 AM

Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, others under attack? Despite all the big IPO news about Google, the bigger news today is that it doesn't work. Slap on an age-discrimination suit while we're at it, and potential trouble for the IPO. Have Larry and Sergei finally pissed off the wrong people?
posted by mrgrimm (31 comments total)

Google Canada and a bunch of other affiliates still work -- for now.
posted by maudlin at 11:03 AM on July 26, 2004

Connectivity problems are attributed to the MyDoom variant scanning domain names for email addresses.
I love Google and these careless Windows folks are starting to piss me off with their stupidity and carelessness.
I didn't care when it was SCO, or M$ the viruses were attacking, but don't mess with Google!
posted by nofundy at 11:04 AM on July 26, 2004

Google CA does not work for me (neither does Google US). Same server error msg for both.
posted by kokogiak at 11:05 AM on July 26, 2004

Crap. Now it doesn't work at all.

::whimpers and clutches blankie::
posted by maudlin at 11:07 AM on July 26, 2004

Google is working just fine for me here in the UK (.com and .co.uk), although there are reports of problems with .co.uk.
posted by influx at 11:13 AM on July 26, 2004

It's fine here on the East Coast.

And don't you wonder about a Windows worm that affects Google?
posted by tommasz at 11:22 AM on July 26, 2004

Here in NYC it's been down for over three hours now-- longest google downtime I can remember.

Also, google UK isn't working for me. (Note that the homepages of the google variants all load, but searches return error 503s)

I'm a bit shocked considering Google, Yahoo and Altavista are all independent engines at this point... yikes.
posted by gwint at 11:29 AM on July 26, 2004

don't you wonder about a Windows worm that affects Google?

(IANAT so i cannot explain, but ...) from the ISC:

"The latest version of MyDoom, which started arriving in peoples mail boxes in force today, uses search eninges [sic] to find more recipients for its message.

Once the virus is started, it searched the users files for domain names. Once it spotted a domain name (e.g. '@example.com', or in 'www.example.com'), it will search various search engines for valid e-mail addresses within these domains. These search engines include Lycos, Google, Altavista, Yahoo and possibly others. Some of the search strings used:

GET /default.asp?lpv=1&loc=searchhp&tab=web&query=e-mail+example.com

Some search engines report performance issues. "
posted by mrgrimm at 11:29 AM on July 26, 2004

Seriously, though, how much of an outage could we manage before this begins to affect overall productivity? I know I've grown to depend absolutely on Google for the quick first answer to just about any question.

This is like a time warp to ten years ago. Maybe that Google circa 1960 form that was circulating a while back wasn't so far-fetched....
posted by baltimore at 11:29 AM on July 26, 2004

Huh, at least for right this moment, it's working fine for me in CA. I'm almost scared to post this in a superstitious kind of way.
posted by synapse at 11:34 AM on July 26, 2004

I thought this was just the firewall here at the office. I'm equally relieved and alarmed.

Gmail is still working fine, but I had no idea how often I actually went to Google every day.

I've gotten a lot of work done today.
posted by chicobangs at 11:36 AM on July 26, 2004

Here in Cleveland it hasn't worked for hours - for me, anyway. Also getting the error message for google.ie, google.co.uk, google.de, and google.ca.
posted by amro at 11:38 AM on July 26, 2004

No problems in Toronto.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 11:38 AM on July 26, 2004

Yahoo search still works just fine, and I sometimes prefer it to Google.
posted by Vidiot at 11:39 AM on July 26, 2004

It has been down for me all day in NJ and AltaVista has been unbearably slow. HotBot is working, but I can't seem to get it to return more than 10 results per page.
posted by caddis at 11:39 AM on July 26, 2004

Google works fine from Oregon.
posted by Keyser Soze at 11:41 AM on July 26, 2004

I used a9.com and it seemed to work fine.

Google's been down for a couple of hours here in Boston. I figured they shut it down due to the DNC.
posted by bondcliff at 11:41 AM on July 26, 2004

Anybody want me to google something for them?
posted by DrJohnEvans at 11:42 AM on July 26, 2004

Just like that odd, disconnected moment when you reach for the light switch during a power failure, my first thought this morning was to Google for news of why this was happening.

Fortunately, at least at this moment, news.google.com is alive.
posted by baltimore at 11:46 AM on July 26, 2004

google has been working in dallas all day as far as i can see.
posted by bob sarabia at 12:00 PM on July 26, 2004

Google searches appear to be back (for me at least - boston area). When this first came up, my initial instinct was to copy the Google error message, and paste it into google to see what other people were saying about it... d'oh!
posted by kokogiak at 12:02 PM on July 26, 2004

just a thought... do all DNS listings for google point to the same place?

What I mean is, do the listings for .co.uk, .ca and .com in the uk all point to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and for people using american dns systems they point to yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy?
posted by twine42 at 12:12 PM on July 26, 2004

it just came back for me too. sorry for the newsfilter. i was just curious if there was a big story out there. i guess not.
posted by mrgrimm at 12:12 PM on July 26, 2004

I was tempted to ask here myself when it disappeared for me (NYC) but others I asked could still get to it. It's back now, of course. I wonder whether they'll explain it.
posted by Songdog at 12:27 PM on July 26, 2004

Time for Google to update the "Risk Factors" section of their prospectus: "Addendum - Additional risks: Virus-ridden Microsoft software might break Google."
posted by kokogiak at 12:41 PM on July 26, 2004

I am not so sure it is related to geography, as much as to your network. This quote from a Google spokesman appeared in the MSNBC story, "A small percentage of our users and networks that have the MyDoom virus have been affected for a longer period of time. "
posted by caddis at 12:43 PM on July 26, 2004

"do all DNS listings for google point to the same place?"

No. They use Akamai DNS [horrible flash presentation], which has geographical features.
posted by majick at 1:00 PM on July 26, 2004

Here's InfoWorld's postmortem on last month's Akamai DDoS attack.

Interesting to note that the hed mentions that it was targeted at specific cutomers. Could today's Google - er - bombing have been similar?
posted by mwhybark at 3:44 PM on July 26, 2004

You people might want to check out alltheweb. Jesus, Google may have been revolutionary a couple years ago, but today most sites offer similar functionality.
posted by delmoi at 6:45 PM on July 26, 2004

I dunno...could be me, but gmail and google seem to be down this morning. Same for yahoo and mail.yahoo. I think akamai is under attack again.
posted by dejah420 at 6:40 AM on July 27, 2004

Ummm...nevermind. It was me. D'oh....I forgot I'd set the firewall to block all traffic when I went to bed...I'm cute, but I'm not all that bright when I'm doped up on cold medicine...
posted by dejah420 at 6:48 AM on July 27, 2004