Google Outage Result of Web Accelerator or DNS Hijack?

Google Outage Result of Web Accelerator or DNS Hijack?

On Saturday May 7th, Google shut down from 6:45 to 7 p.m. EST, according to Google spokesman David Krane. Google has clarified that the outage was not a result of server downtime or hacked and that the problems were DNS related. A Google spokesperson said in a statement: “It was not a hacking or a security issue. Google’s global properties were unavailable for a short period of time. We’ve remedied the problem and access to Google has been restored worldwide.”

AP Stories are reporting that the outage may however be linked to the launch last week of Google Web Accelerator. Google Web Accelerator speed access to Web pages by offering cached or compressed copies of sites from Google’s servers. Could it be that too much information was cached by the new Web Accelerator? The Accelerator site was publishing this messageon Saturday : “Thank you for your interest in Google Web Accelerator. We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support”. I seriously doubt GWA was the problem – Google should be prepared for so spammer who tries to get Google Web Accelerator to cache some 100 gig site and continuously revisit.

Some reports also mention that the Domain Name Server information was actually hijacked. A Who.is page reported the following :

$ whois google.com
Whois Server Version 1.3
Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.SUCKS.FIND.CRACKZ.WITH.SEARCH.GULLI.COM
IP Address: 80.190.192.24
Registrar: KEY-SYSTEMS GMBH
Whois Server: whois.rrpproxy.net
Referral URL: http://www.key-systems.net
Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.HAS.LESS.FREE.PORN.IN.ITS.SEARCH.ENGINE.THAN.SECZY.COM
IP Address: 209.187.114.130
Registrar: INNERWISE, INC. D/B/A ITSYOURDOMAIN.COM
Whois Server: whois.itsyourdomain.com
Referral URL: http://www.itsyourdomain.com

Oh well, whatever the reason. Google was down, it’s now back up… seems to be something with DNS, let’s see what happens with GOOG shares on Monday and how overblown the outage becomes.