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'Ugly' mistake sends Google data to China


nir

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Google data for search and cloud services went astray for more than an hour on Monday thanks to an "ugly" mistake by an African ISP.

The data was sent the wrong way when MainOne Cable, in Nigeria, updated address books for key network hardware.

 

The update saw it claim to be the best way to reach millions of Google net addresses.

 

The mistake spread to other networks and led to Google traffic travelling via China and Russia.

New routes

In a tweet, MainOne said the mistake had been made during a "planned network upgrade".

 

It added: "The error was corrected within 74 minutes and processes put in place to avoid reoccurrence."

 

All the different networks that make up the internet constantly swap information about the best way to reach other parts of the global system.

 

Mistakes on one network can mean traffic is re-routed the wrong way.

 

Google said it had spotted the error and blamed it on "incorrect routing" of data.

 

A spokesman for the search giant told technology news website Ars Technica that all traffic sent the wrong way was encrypted, which should "limit" any damage caused by it being misdirected.

 

Later on Monday web company Cloudflare was hit by a second MainOne Cable mistake that also saw much of its traffic re-routed.

 

In a statement, Matthew Prince, chief executive of Cloudflare, said the mistake had probably been made as a result of a network meeting in Nigeria in early November.

 

Typically, he told Ars Technica, the meetings prompt ISPs to set up more data-sharing agreements with each other.

 

The mistake that re-routed data had been made while a new data-sharing link had been being created, he said.

 

"This was a big, ugly screw-up," he said. "Intentional route leaks we've seen to do things like steal crypto-currency are typically far more targeted."

 

Mr Prince's explanation defused earlier claims that the re-routing had been an attempt to steal data.

 

Ameet Naik from net security company ThousandEyes had characterised the incident to The Register as "grand theft internet" and said it was "unlikely" to be accidental.

 

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Too bad they came back up.. :dance2: yesterday it seemed like Eset  was being hit hard as well  it took me like hour to reach there activation servers to renew my key. As far as Google i don't care about them  only people and sites that use there services  care ,  wow they was offline for 2 minutes the  internet is going to end not.  I remember  when hardly no one knew what Google was when they was just a nobody just starting out and the internet ran just fine without them .  China has Google blocked  and there  internet  runs fine without it , While China blocks some stuff  you can find sites on baidu  that Google blocks with there Anti Piracy filters. :yes:

 

That's what people get for trusting there info with a service  that got rich harvesting  there data .   Lol  last week it was the CIA data Google was leaking  and this week it is everyone. But fact is Google always has access  to your data and  they will hand it right over  to  any country they serve  and you ask  them why they will say because it's the law . That's called capitalism at it's finest,   They put profit and there existence   above peoples privacy  and security  . Sites hiding behind Cloudflare  have outages all the time and are attacked  on  a regular  bases..  Poor Google  they got billions of dollars and still  they get knocked out maybe they should shut down.:lmao:  . Google are the one that want to  put there noise back  in China after they got  hacked last time ..They deserve  everything  bad happens to them plus a 100 fold more...:rofl:

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