Google apologised for what it called a "traffic jam" that resulted in slow service or even interruption on the internet search giant's main page.
Gmail and Google's news site were also reported as "sluggish" or unavailable to millions of users for about an hour.
This is not the first time the company has faced such problems.
It claimed that an error in one of its systems led it to direct some of its web traffic through Asia, which created a traffic jam and saw around 14 per cent of its global users experiencing slow services or even interruptions.
This caused some UK users to be unable to access the site at the end of the working day, when the site was unavailable from around 3.48 pm.
read more
Friday
Sunday
Google Ready To Lay Some Pipe
A trans-Pacific cable could be ready to launch in 2009, connecting Google to Asia and the Pacific while delivering a significant cost savings to the company.
Google is in mostly-denial mode as news of its advancing plans to delve deep into the waters of the Pacific with a multi-terabit cable has swept the Internet.
Communications Day claimed in its story that Google and other carriers would join together to rollout the "Unity" cable. Planning meetings have happened as recently as last week.
How close is Google to slinging some major bandwidth under the sea? They aren't saying:
"Google would not strictly confirm or deny the existence of the Unity plan today, with spokesman Barry Schnitt telling our North American correspondent Patrick Neighly that "Additional infrastructure for the Internet is good for users and there are a number of proposals to add a Pacific submarine cable. We're not commenting on any of these plans."
Job listings for strategic negotiators skilled in working on issues related to submarine networks began appearing online at the end of July. We're going to suggest Google found who they were looking for to serve in this position. read more
Google is in mostly-denial mode as news of its advancing plans to delve deep into the waters of the Pacific with a multi-terabit cable has swept the Internet.
Communications Day claimed in its story that Google and other carriers would join together to rollout the "Unity" cable. Planning meetings have happened as recently as last week.
How close is Google to slinging some major bandwidth under the sea? They aren't saying:
"Google would not strictly confirm or deny the existence of the Unity plan today, with spokesman Barry Schnitt telling our North American correspondent Patrick Neighly that "Additional infrastructure for the Internet is good for users and there are a number of proposals to add a Pacific submarine cable. We're not commenting on any of these plans."
Job listings for strategic negotiators skilled in working on issues related to submarine networks began appearing online at the end of July. We're going to suggest Google found who they were looking for to serve in this position. read more
PDF Potentially A Malware Vehicle
Proof of concept code demonstrated to Secure Computing showed how Adobe's popular Portable Document Formet could become a massive attack vector for malware distributors.
Paul Henry of Secure Computing first began spreading the word in January about a potentially bad situation with PDF files. Proof of concept code emerged that showed how JavaScript could be embedded in a PDF, to execute when opened.Henry said Adobe patched that particular problem. Until a flood of PDF spam began hitting inboxes for a few weeks over the summer, and stopping almost as quickly as they started, PDF as a threat left the radar.
After chatting with Henry for this article, I learned there is a new reason to fear the PDF, even though Adobe considers PDF not to be a threat. The original researcher who shared the proof of concept code with Henry in January has done so again.
It's a new way to embed JavaScript in those files. The researcher told Henry he will not share proof of concept code this time. Malicious uses of the technique, which has been disclosed to Adobe, could be easy to replicate from the POC.
The example POC from January could show the local C: drive's contents upon execution. Attackers could create something exploiting this newest embed threat that would steal files and upload them, or download malicious files from a remote server.
The widespread use of PDF in business environments, not to mention the Web 2.0 crowd's love of embedded content, could turn a corrupt PDF into a full-fledged outbreak. Systems running anti-malware scanning should fare better against arriving PDF malware, but all computer users should be as wary of PDF these days as they are of any content or links sent by unknown users, or unexpectedly from known senders. read more
Paul Henry of Secure Computing first began spreading the word in January about a potentially bad situation with PDF files. Proof of concept code emerged that showed how JavaScript could be embedded in a PDF, to execute when opened.Henry said Adobe patched that particular problem. Until a flood of PDF spam began hitting inboxes for a few weeks over the summer, and stopping almost as quickly as they started, PDF as a threat left the radar.
After chatting with Henry for this article, I learned there is a new reason to fear the PDF, even though Adobe considers PDF not to be a threat. The original researcher who shared the proof of concept code with Henry in January has done so again.
It's a new way to embed JavaScript in those files. The researcher told Henry he will not share proof of concept code this time. Malicious uses of the technique, which has been disclosed to Adobe, could be easy to replicate from the POC.
The example POC from January could show the local C: drive's contents upon execution. Attackers could create something exploiting this newest embed threat that would steal files and upload them, or download malicious files from a remote server.
The widespread use of PDF in business environments, not to mention the Web 2.0 crowd's love of embedded content, could turn a corrupt PDF into a full-fledged outbreak. Systems running anti-malware scanning should fare better against arriving PDF malware, but all computer users should be as wary of PDF these days as they are of any content or links sent by unknown users, or unexpectedly from known senders. read more
Labels: Adobe, malware, PDF, Secure Computing
Wednesday
Tor Used To Collect Embassy Email Passwords
Several readers wrote in to inform us that Swedish security researcher Dan Egerstad has revealed how he collected 100 passwords from embassies and governments worldwide, without hacking into anything: he sniffed Tor exit routers. Both Ars and heise have writeups on Egerstad's blog post, but neither adds much to the original. It's not news that unencrypted traffic exits the Tor network unencrypted, but Egerstad correctly perceived, and called attention to, the lack of appreciation for this fact in organizations worldwide.
read more
Vista Pirates To Get "Black Screen of Darkness"
Microsoft has just turned on Reduced Functionality Mode, worldwide, and sent a letter to OEMs explaining the consequences of Vista piracy. These include a black screen after 1 hour of browsing, no start menu or task bar, and no desktop. Using fear as a motivator, the email warns resellers to 'make sure your customers always get genuine Windows Vista preinstalled.
read more
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
