Google Services Suffer Downtime Due to Traffic Misdirection

• Some Google users experienced downtime lasting over an hour earlier today.
• The issue was caused due to traffic misdirection by ISPs in China, and Nigeria.
• The tech giant revealed that no user data was affected and it is currently conducting an investigation.

Some Google users were unable to access the company’s services including Search and YouTube. The issue was caused due to the company’s traffic being routed via China Telecom, Nigerian-provider MainOne, and Russian network operator TransTelekom. The tech giant revealed that it is still investigating and currently there is no reason to believe it was caused by a cyber attack. User data was encrypted for security, and it is unlikely any personal data was stolen.

The first reports surfaced around 1:00 PM PST reporting that the company’s enterprise service was down according to the Google Cloud Status Dashboard. However, it was not just Google’s enterprise service that was affected as consumer services like YouTube went down as well. Not only Google services were affected but also third-party services connected to the platform. G Suite apps were not affected.

ThousandEyes BGP Route Visualization shows the 216.58.192.0/19 prefix being leaked into the Internet, which would cause traffic to #Google to be routed via networks in #Russia, #China and #Nigeria pic.twitter.com/q9OlHCIvNK

— Cisco ThousandEyes (@thousandeyes) November 12, 2018

The downtime lasted for approximately one hour, and the company revealed after the downtime that the issue was caused due to cloud IP addresses being incorrectly advertised by providers other than Google. The company stated that it was an external issue and it will be conducting an investigation to avoid such incidents in the future.

Google believes that there is no reason to believe the issue was caused by a cyber attack and it is likely due to a bug. However, there is a possibility that malicious parties may have tried to intercept the wrongly routed data during the downtime. According to researchers, it is possible for hackers to alter network maps in routers (also known as border gateway protocols or BGPs) to get access to internet traffic. Internal investigations are still going, and we are yet to receive confirmation about the source of the downtime.

Do you think the downtime suffered by Google was a bug or malicious in nature? Let us know in the comments below. Get instant updates on TechNadu’s Facebook page, or Twitter handle.