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Google harm bug [This site may harm your computer]  (View post)

David Mulder [PersonRank 10]

Saturday, January 31, 2009
15 years ago16,009 views

http://www.greatslovakia.com/public/screenshots/Picture%2018.png

http://www.greatslovakia.com/public/screenshots/Picture%2019.png

Google totally broken?

Lars Kasper [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

Yes, totally broken for me as well. Regardless of which browser (Opera, Safari, ... Mac OS X) or search terms I use.

Jérôme Flipo [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Idem for imdb.com!
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:imdb.com

Yv. [PersonRank 7]

15 years ago #

http://i41.tinypic.com/23vddnq.jpg

Jérôme Flipo [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Oops, no: all my searches return a potential threat. In addition, the link is dead (502 server error: http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=45449&topic=360&hl=en&sa=X&oi=malwarewarninglink&resnum=1&ct=help)

David Mulder [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Just checked through 5 worldwide proxies as well... this kinda is serious...

Jérôme Flipo [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

This will make the tech news, if it affects all users. It looks like a big bug :(

Yv. [PersonRank 7]

15 years ago #

And more fun is that all links are timing out to:
http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py

Pete [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

"Warning – visiting this web site may harm your computer!"

nice :)

David Mulder [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I wonder whether this has anything at all to do with my last post http://blogoscoped.com/forum/149626.html

Typical actually: 10 minutes ago first my post, 2 minutes later second thread 5 minutes later third thread :P

AnthonyP [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

[Moved from "All Google Listings show Malware Warning?" – Tony]

Thought this was interesting this morning...

Here's the screengrab... http://i44.tinypic.com/29e5fty.jpg

Anyone else seeing this?

Steve Johnson [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

[Moved from "This site may harm your computer"]

Searching Google from my computer (either Chrome or Firefox) , ALL results are coming up with the warning "This site may harm your computer." Anyone else?

pokemo [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[Moved from "This site may harm your computer"]

i get this msg too....
someone must have hacked Google

John Stevens [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

[Moved from "This site may harm your computer"]

Me too, I wonder why? No matter if I search in English or Swedish, my two languages, all the same.

Stephen Tordoff [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[Moved from "This site may harm your computer"]

Safari 4 Developer Preview (Mac) here – All results have "This site may harm your computer", e.g. http://www.google.com/interstitial?url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_sort

AnthonyP [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

[Moved from "This site may harm your computer"]

Yes.. seeing on all browsers, no matter the search term.

pokemo [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[Moved from "This site may harm your computer"]

google.com is harmful... :(
http://www.google.com.my/search?hl=en&q=google.com&meta=

milivella [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

All-time greatest bug! :) (Zunes are happy)

Yv. [PersonRank 7]

15 years ago #

http://www.yvoschaap.com/ger.gif

pokemo [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[Moved from "This site may harm your computer" – Tony]

weird...deleted?
A big bug coming here?

pokemo [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

bug, bug, bug....drive me crazy.....:(

bwaje [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

Got it in french too : Ce site risque d'endommager votre ordinateur.

Back to using Alta Vista instead!

Joonas [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

Yep, I've got this error too.. tried on Finnish and English sites.

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Getting it in the UK too :(

Sam Davyson [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

What a bug! The whole world is going to ground to a halt! So many false accusations.

http://sam.davyson.com/files/secure/misc/imgs/Picture%2031.png

This should not go unfixed for long!

Yv. [PersonRank 7]

15 years ago #

So, Google actually stopped for over 30 minutes!

Dave [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

this is really bad. Total blackout of google. First time since it started?

Heads will roll.....

stefan2904†† [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

http://img177.imageshack.us/my.php?image=googlebug2ks7.png

David Mulder [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

In my first post I called it a bug, but after thinking it through for a while I realized this can't be a bug. First of all its known that it takes google ages to spread something between all different servers to make an update worldwide. Personally I would say its more likely that this is done by a single person, which bringsus to three possibilties; A somebody hacked google (out of question), B somebody inside google wanted to check out his power, C there has been some fighting inside google and this was the threat... I am probably slightly overnegative, but as this happened to all sites at once it can't be the crawler which would have started to indexed sites wrongly and a bug in the message showing itself would have been solved in minutes. This is most likely something in between (I would say) created deliberatly.

Sam Davyson [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Assuming that David Mulder was one of the first to experience the bug. The bug started at 14.40 GMT. And has so far being going on for 30 mins.

SidH [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

Does anyone have any idea whats happening here? It's getting very annoying copying and pasting sites into my address bar.

József Jároli [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

Google even declares itself potentially harmful if you search for google... The same bug can be seen here in Hungary too...

Andreas [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

Lots of Twitter noise about it too:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23googmayharm

(btw, this is the post the hashtag originated from: http://twitter.com/onstartups/statuses/1164527858 – interesting it got picked up so fast)

Sam Davyson [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[put at-character here]David:

In your opinion, how long should it take to fix?

Mark [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

Why have no mainstream bloggers picked up on this yet?

Sam Davyson [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

TechCrunch has got a post:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/31/google-flags-whole-internet-as-malware/

Apparently http://stopbadware.org is down. This could have caused the issue.

Dave [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

Its working again

Dave [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

Hang on....its working from google toolbar, just not from the search box on google.....strange :s

AnthonyP [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

Also Works from the Firefox search box as well... Direct text inserts into Google.com are not working. weird.

hebbet [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

working fine!

David Mulder [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Not permission messages after using google search (through the google search button) by removing everything except the q parameter it works for now.

stefan2904 [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

it could have coused by invalid data from stopbadware.org!?

SidH [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

It's seems that everything is working again. Although stopbadware.org isn't loading still.

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Fixed but not on all Data Centers, yet.

David Mulder [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

First of all for the sake of documentation, here is a screenshot of what users must have seen who clicked through on the bad site links while it was fixed
http://www.greatslovakia.com/public/screenshots/forbidden.JPG

And somebody asked me how long I would expect something like this to be fixed: a few minutes, why? Because I have been trying to get a real harmful site to display me a warning and if I am correct they simply disabled the message for ALL sites.

stefan2904 [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

tweet of the day: http://twitter.com/derjoern/status/1164632716

Watchit [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

Yes, I found it too at http://rhineblog.com/2009/01/google-reports-all-sites-harmful.html

Luka [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I have the problem now in Gmail : I have a phising warning in many mails...

Luka [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

http://static.pcinpact.com/images/bd/news/67187-google-ce-site-risque-d-endommager-votre-ordinateur.png

Do you think it is real ?

hebbet [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Google will post soon on Google Blog

hebbet [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

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

stefan2904 [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

uh. marissa herself..

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I still think this bug was due to a deer...

BTW, on Google Hot Trends:
http://i44.tinypic.com/a5fur.png

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

To clarify, the warning interstital page also showed when you clicked on the result page's title link, not just when you clicked on "This site may harm your computer", right?

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

yes

Above 55 comments were made in the forum before this was blogged,

John Galt [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

The bug showed up on all browsers and multiple machines....uninstalling the Google Toolbar took care of it.

Ianf [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Earliest mention of this massive failure derived from hh:mm timestamps of comments to TechCrunch's post [ = around 6:50 a.m. GMT -0800? thus 15:50 CET?]

"Google Flags Whole Internet As Malware"

by TechCrunch/ Robin Wauters on January 31, 2009

We’re not quite sure what’s going on, but a couple of minutes ago any search result from Google started being flagged as malware with a message stating “This site may harm your computer”. Including Google’s own websites. [...]
http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/googlemalware.jpg

http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/google-malware-warning-techcrunch.png

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/31/google-flags-whole-internet-as-malware/

Grega M [PersonRank 2]

15 years ago #

Philipp, Google has just updated their blog so you might (if you find it necessary) re-edit the post.

mbegin [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Google took out the part about the list being maintained by humans not algorithms...

hebbet [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

gmail spam filter was broken too
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-mornings-spam-filter-issue.html

George R [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

"Well, I don't think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error."

from "2001: A Space Odyssey" (screenplay by Kubrick and Clarke, novel by Clarke)

http://www.underview.com/haltrans.html#imsure

J. McNair [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I have learned 2 things from this:

1. Can Google break the whole entire internet? Yeah, a little bit, but so far not catastrophically.
2. How quickly can Google fix the internet after they break it? In a little more than an hour.

Nobody is perfect. Google Search is back to normal. World is still spinning and--ZOMG THEY BROKE TEH GMAIL???!!! FLAY THEM, I SAY!!! TEHY AR UNRESOPNSILBE AND SHULD GOE 2 GAOL!!!

George R [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Googles 2008 revenue: US$21795550000
length of 2008*: 527040 minutes
US$41354.64/minute
potential average revenue in 40 minutes: US$1654185.60

Google's actual revenue probably did not go to zero during those 40 minutes, but I imagine it was affected.

* – excludes the leap second

George R [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I decided to check the current reports for some select sites.
I checked "google.com", "microsoft.com, "yahoo.com", and "blogoscoped.com". Below are some highlights.
--

google.com
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=google.com

"Malicious software includes 1 trojan(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 0 new processes on the target machine."

"Over the past 90 days, google.com appeared to function as an intermediary for the infection of 1 site(s) including loady.de/."
--

microsoft.com
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=microsoft.com

"Of the 15600 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 2 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-01-31, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2009-01-30."

"Malicious software includes 2 scripting exploit(s), 2 trojan(s), 1 exploit(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 3 new processes on the target machine."

"Malicious software is hosted on 3 domain(s), including 710sese.cn/, rmk-lgs.com/, weixk.com/."

"5 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including templatecentral.com/, vvk5.cn/, topxml.com/."
--

yahoo.com
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=yahoo.com

"120 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent."

"Malicious software includes 93 scripting exploit(s), 88 trojan(s), 17 adware(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 6 new processes on the target machine."

"Malicious software is hosted on 222 domain(s), including incheongh.com/, asmkuang.cn/, lineacount.info/."

"113 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including taiwanlottery.com.tw/, 89.28.13.0/, clicksoverview.com/."

"Over the past 90 days, yahoo.com appeared to function as an intermediary for the infection of 4 site(s) including tynews.cn/, bboit.cn/, xntelec.com/."

"Yes, this site has hosted malicious software over the past 90 days. It infected 10 domain(s), including 68ka.com/, hai163.cn/, duba.net/."
--

The report for "blogoscoped.com" seems clean.
http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=blogoscoped.com

Josue R. [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[put at-character here]Ianf : The title "Google Flags Whole Internet As Malware" sounds like something made from TheOnion.com, yet it is real!

Why hasn't anyone asked something very important, how did Adwords get affected and will any company out there be stupid enough to sue Google for thus mishap?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[Thanks Grega, I added an update!]

Leigh Edwardson [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

That's OK google, we forgive you. 40 mins. made searchers realize that there's no decent alternative for google :).

Juha-Matti Laurio [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Response:
http://blog.stopbadware.org/2009/01/31/google-glitch-causes-confusion

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