Mercury Rahu incidents this weekend , internet

May 10, 2005

Dear Members,

Google search down, 15 min. Saturday and Mozilla has glitches surfacing this weekend. Aloha, Sally

May 09, 2005

Google's 15 min DNS headache.

Saturday,

access to the world's leading Internet search engine, google.com was

unavailable for 15 mins. The search page reportedly was down from 6:45

p.m. to 7 p.m. EST. Access to Gmail, Google News and other properties

were unavailable during that period. The problem was related to the

Domain Name System (DNS), which maps web names to the numerical

Internet Protocol (IP) addresses used by computers.

Within minutes of the outage rumors of a Google hack started making the Internet rounds.

" It was not a hacking or security issue, " spokesman David Krane told

Associated Press. " Google's global properties were unavailable for a

short period of time. We have remedied the problem and access to Google

has been restored worldwide. "

Some users reported being redirected to an alternative search service

called SoGoSearch. The . Engineer, Paul Mutton says the nature of the

outage suggests that local DNS servers (operated by Google) were unable

to resolve the name www.google.com because Google's DNS server was

malfunctioning and so instead resorted to trying close matches, such as

www.google.com.net, which points to SoGoSearch.

May 09, 2005

Recently

discovered " zero-day " exploit code that takes advantage of two

vulnerabilities could mean serious trouble for Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3

users, and, to a lesser extent, Mozilla Suite users. Yesterday,

Mozilla.org issued an advisory explaining the vulnerabilities and what

measures to take to work around them.In Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2005-42, Mozilla.org

explains that the exploit could make use of javascript: url

code to navigate back to a previously visited page -- an online store

order form with credit card information, an online banking account

management page, etc. -- to steal cookies, data, or even to " perform

actions on behalf of the user. " This exploit affects both Mozilla

Firefox 1.0.3 and Mozilla Suite.Additionally, another javascript: url

exploit takes advantage of Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3's install dialogue,

tricking Firefox into believing a malicious site is a whitelisted site,

and giving an attacker the ability to install software.According to Whitedust Security Portal, the exploit code can be adapted to threaten Mac OS and Linux OS users.

In its advisory, Mozilla.org recommends the following actions until an update is released:Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3 and Mozilla Suite users should disable javascript

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3 should remove all " Allowed sites " under the " Allow web sites to install software " option.To learn more, please read Ryan Naraine's article on

DesktopLinux.com sister site, eWEEK.com:Zero-Day Firefox Exploit Sends Mozilla Scrambling