Even Google can get hacked… maybe

For those security staff who feel insecure or embarrassed about getting hacked, news that Google may have been disrupted by an external irritant will come as some comfort.

On November 12 for approximately 30 minutes as some services became unavailable after traffic was being rerouted through other networks. The company has not disclosed the specific nature of the disturbance, though it also hasn’t ruled out nefarious individuals.

“The issue with Google Cloud IP addresses being erroneously advertised by internet service providers other than Google has been resolved for all affected users as of 14:35 US/Pacific,” the company stated.

“Throughout the duration of this issue Google services were operating as expected and we believe the root cause of the issue was external to Google. We will conduct an internal investigation of this issue and make appropriate improvements to our systems to help prevent or minimize future recurrence.”

Network intelligence company ThousandEyes reported problems with its own G-Suite services, noting internet traffic from its own San Francisco office was traversing through China and Russia on its way back to Google, sparking some concerns. Unfortunately for ThousandEyes, this wasn’t a problem limited to the San Francisco office and was affecting all locations around the world.

No company is immune to the shady corners of the internet, though some would assume an organization as savvy and powerful as Google would be safer than most. Although the disturbance only lasted for a short period of time, for 30 minutes traffic was traversing through some countries which have a history of monitoring communications lines.

While this would be a perfect opportunity to jump on the ‘China is evil’ bandwagon, what is worth noting is traffic would drop upon hitting the Great Firewall of China, according to ThousandEyes’ investigation. Therefore it is logical to assume the attack was either an internal glitch from Google, or an external attack from someone aside from China.

For those who are constantly battling against the dark forces of the internet to keep customers and employees safe from prying eyes, take some comfort that even Google can get rocked by hackers, potentially…