Google disappears for Irish internet users – but was it a nameserver hack or admin screwup?

Thousands of Irish internet users found that they were unable to access Google earlier today when the nameservers for google.ie began to point to a third-party server based in Indonesia.

Whether this was the result of a malicious hack or an admin screwup is as yet uncertain, but the danger was that if someone bad was responsible for the change they could have potentially taken users to a bogus Google website, and infected them with malware or distributed advertising pop-ups.

Many Irish users turned to social networking sites to describe how they were unable to access google.ie…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.