Anybody else seeing this after attempting a Google search: The browser title bar says "503 Server Error". I'd look up what this is on the Internet, but Google is down, I'm helpless, I've forgotten how to spell Yahoo. Is this the end times the Bible talks about? --Percy

There are these things called books, and I have a few, one of which says this about 503 Service Unavailable errors: Perhaps a denial of service attack?--Percy

responded almost instantly --- faster than usual

Still down for me. Hmmm. Going to another computer...Interesting. Google is not working when accessed from behind the firewall at my place of work, but it is up when not behind the firewall. IE and NS both get the message. What's weird is that the error is from Google: We're a big enough company, I wonder if we run our own Google servers. Does Google ever operate that way?--Percy

You mave have to go through a proxy server at your workplace where all web requests first check for the requested page in local cache and only if not found there seek outside. If that is the case the error would be from your local machine and not Google.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Percy,I am getting the same error that you had.Cheers !Frank

I just heard on CBC radio that there are places all over North America that have lost connection to Google.

It's another MyDoom attack.

quote:

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update Major Internet search engines were crippled Monday morning by a variant of the MyDoom worm, rendering Google inaccessible to many users and slowing results from Yahoo.

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The attack also affected smaller engines, including AltaVista, a Yahoo subsidiary, and Lycos.

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Google representatives confirmed that the MyDoom worm affected performance of the search engine, but, despite numerous e-mail complaints received by CNET News.com, said the attack had a limited impact.

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"At no point was the Google Web site significantly impaired, and service for all users and networks is expected to be restored shortly," the company said in a statement.

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A Lycos representative said the company is aware of the problem and is working to block the performance obstacles.

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"It is kind of an inadvertent DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack," said Craig Schmugar, a virus researcher at McAfee Avert. The sites are being knocked out in the search for more e-mail addresses. This is a twist on MyDoom: Earlier variants looked for e-mail addresses on the host hard drive. The latest version is now running queries on search engines.

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"Once infected, a machine might send thousands of requests," Schmugar said. If a computer is only a few years old and connected to the Internet via broadband, the user probably won't notice the slight decrease of his machine's performance, he speculated.

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Internet performance management company Keynote Systems said it noticed on Monday morning a dip in the average performance of the top 40 sites it measured. The availability of those sites rarely dips below 99 percent, according to Della Lowe, a Keynote representative, but over the last two hours, availability was below that mark.

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"That suggests there could be some wider Internet problem, but we're still researching the data," Lowe said.

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Google users were especially taken aback by the search outage. Todd Breslow of Philadelphia was hoping to use Google to search for the proper way to manipulate image border colors when doing Web development but instead had to turn to MSN's search to complete his query.

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"I have just come back from lunch, and Google is STILL not reachable," Breslow said in an e-mail interview. "General thoughts in the office are shock and awe."

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This message has been edited by jar, 07-26-2004 03:37 PM

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I couldn't get Google this afternoon about 4.30pm BST (fourish hours ago). Seems OK now, but a bit temperamental.

Google is back! Civilization is saved! --Percy