Google Hacked

jason s · #1 (**permalink**) 02-04-09, 19:53

Google malfunctioned for the first time in the history. Google is the most popular search engine in the world. Users Googling for anything were warned about each result like this "This site may harm your computer."

It started just after 14:30 GMT on January 31, 2009 and lasted for at least an hour. Shock of the users was noticeable by the rate queries appeared at Yahoo answers more than 200 with in an hour.

Danny Lawson · #2 (**permalink**) 02-04-09, 23:03

That's something that might be a big worry for Google and company. This kind of hacks are not at good for them as they like to keep everything as a top secrect. I guess Jason directly or indirectly it has some connections with you. ;)

clarabean · #3 (**permalink**) 02-05-09, 09:24

Google was not hacked. One of the employees input the wrong thing and this was the result. If you do a search, you will find out more information. There was some bickering as to who was at fault because they use another company to watch for malware but it boiled down to a value being set incorrectly.

BodShane · #4 (**permalink**) 02-05-09, 09:49

Even if they were hacked, they will never reveal it and that's quite obvious. ;)

Regards,

Shane Phillips

Christina · #5 (**permalink**) 02-05-09, 11:45

Yes you are right Shane and if they do so then it can directly affect their business

centelo · #6 (**permalink**) 02-05-09, 13:21

Yea I could see google shares dropping like hot cakes if they were to admit something that easy to do to a company worth "bajillions". A mistake is easier to cover up when its a small one. :D That is pretty funny though, "oh noes BBC are teh evilz".

Maggie Q. · #7 (**permalink**) 02-05-09, 13:21

No one knows for sure that Google got hacked, story is still developing.
Whether hacked or not, one thing is sure something pretty calamitous must have happened for them to have system wide breakdown like that. Google is saying it was a DNS issue, nothing is out about what the source of the issue was?

bloggerbee · #8 (**permalink**) 02-05-09, 14:39

If you check out Google's blog, they have given an explanation for what occurred. I don't understand what is hard to believe in this. I can only think that some would prefer to have it be more serious for some reason.

Quote:

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 maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list.

We periodically update that list and released one such update to 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.

BodShane · #9 (**permalink**) 02-05-09, 18:08

If they reveal that they were hacked, the first impact will be on the advertisers. ;)

HappyNerd · #10 (**permalink**) 02-05-09, 21:14

I don't know what to believe about all this. My mind goes into paranoid mode whenever I think about it. I start wondering if the official story is just a coverup for them being hacked.

I just hope it doesn't happen again but it was kind of funny to see innocent websites like Treehouse TV having warnings.

BodShane · #11 (**permalink**) 02-06-09, 13:38

Security breaches is definitely not going to stop. Henceforth, to improve security on servers, it's necessary action should be taken on every possible loop hole on the servers.

bluetrance05 · #12 (**permalink**) 02-07-09, 03:40

I didn't see the warning message "This site may harm your computer." anywhere when I typed bbc as the keyword to search in Google. In my opinion, Google is too big to get hacked because Google has a lot of IT programmers working for the Google company.

BodShane · #13 (**permalink**) 02-07-09, 09:49

Well, it has been fixed or looked over already.