Argentine version of Google falls into “wrong” hands

https://en.mercopress.com/2021/04/22/argentine-version-of-google-falls-into-wrong-hands-leading-to-search-engine-s-temporary-collapse

by pedro-guimaraes • 5 years ago

308 161 5 years ago

en.mercopress.com

batch12• 5 years ago

I wonder how long it would have taken to be noticed if he replicated DNS and sat on it for a while. Better yet, how long if he had redirected or cloned the site.

throwaway36992• 5 years ago

Google gets enough DNS traffic that I doubt you could just sit on it for very long. Not without an expensive bill.

kuroguro• 5 years ago

Wouldn't most of it get cached downstream tho?

101008• 5 years ago

But what if you just point to original Google DNS servers?

Forbo• 5 years ago

>According to the Open Data Córdoba group (which is dedicated to tracking expired Argentine domains) Google's domain had not expired and, in fact, the expiration date was in July. But the group too was unable to explain what had happened or why.

Ouch. I think someone's going to have some explaining to do in the post-mortem.

packetslave• 5 years ago

Yeah, MarkMonitor is not going to have a good time on this one (they're the company Google, and a bunch of other high-profile companies) use for domain management and tracking. They're supposed to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

emmelaich• 5 years ago

It's not known whether Google or the AR NIC made the mistake.

kccqzy• 5 years ago

MarkMonitor has been purchased by OpSecSecurity: https://www.opsecsecurity.com/resource/press-release/opsec-s...

I wonder if this has anything to do.

y-c-o-m-b2• 5 years ago

I see this kind of stuff happening all the time; some of them being high-profile sites too (e.g. "Keep America Great" got taken from Trump). Is there some website that monitors domain expiration and sends out alerts or is this mostly lone-actors? I'm always surprised by how quickly they move in on the domain

folli• 5 years ago

It's called Domain drop catching or Domain sniping. There are tools available that do just that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_drop_catching

wrs• 5 years ago

There are many such services, which will not only alert you but automatically try to buy the domain for you. Search for “domain backorders”.

y-c-o-m-b2• 5 years ago

Oh wow even GoDaddy provides the service. Interesting. Thanks!

eli• 5 years ago

yeah but all the good ones are automatically reregistered way faster than you could click the Buy button.

cyberlab• 5 years ago

If you're looking for domains potentially getting 'dropped' by Google, look no further: https://infogalactic.com/info/List_of_Google_domains

HowardStark• 5 years ago

Took a quick glance and noticed that this article is claiming "duck.com" is owned by Google, even though it redirects to DuckDuckGo.

That domain has Namecheap's Whois Guard enabled, so there's no registrant information. However, I'm still inclined to think that it isn't Google's domain since the NS records for "duck.com" point to "nsXX.quack-dns.com"...

Sephr• 5 years ago

iirc this was originally owned by Google and then given to DDG.

celestialcheese• 5 years ago

duck.com was owned by google from an acquisition in 2010.

It was sold to DDG in 2018 https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18137369/duckduckgo-duck...

gtirloni2• 5 years ago

In December 2018, it was reported that Google transferred ownership of the domain name Duck.com to DuckDuckGo. It is not known what price, if any, DuckDuckGo paid for the domain name

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo

jordanmoconnor• 5 years ago

Wouldn't it be funny if DDG was actually Google.

gtirloni2• 5 years ago

Does anyone know what cobrasearch.com was?

FredPret• 5 years ago

It’s like Find My iPhone but much scarier

Rebelgecko• 5 years ago

How was he able to register the domain months before it was supposed to expire? Did he hack the registrar itself?

judge2020• 5 years ago

Either the registrar or the registry - the registry seems more likely as there are no requirements to running a country code TLD’s registry on account of ICANN not wanting to anger any government or seem like they have power over ‘government property’.

jfrunyon2• 5 years ago

There are also very little requirements to running a registrar...

sixothree2• 5 years ago

The technical term for this type of manoeuvre is called “Cybersquatting” in English.

canada_dry• 5 years ago

Yah. This gives him some bragging rights at most. If he hacked something, it'll be a different story though.

0xdba• 5 years ago

No, that's buying a domain in the hopes someone will want it in the future. This was "domain sniping".

ThothIV• 5 years ago

Google will sell you domains that it doesn't own. I've purchased .MX and .CO.UK domains from them just recently. I've purchased Thoth.zone, Thoth.mx and Thoth.pw from them. From networkingsolutions.com I've bought thoth.domains. It's a crazy turf war situation right now, given the broad international legal overlaps and so on and so forth.

freddyym• 5 years ago

The domain google.gi is still for sale, because it can only be purchased by people who live in Gibraltar.

oauea• 5 years ago

Wouldn't someone from Gibraltar be able to buy and lease it to Google?

kortilla2• 5 years ago

Yeah, but Google wouldn’t want any part of that type of arrangement. Better to let it go un-associated with the country than to depend on some other party that can extort at renewal time.

csomar• 5 years ago

There are 30k people in Gibraltar and probably most of them use the .com or .uk domain.

momothereal• 5 years ago

They own https://www.google.com.gi/ though.

GordonS2• 5 years ago

If they really wanted it, presumably they could setup a shell company in Gibraltar using a local agent?

utopcell2• 5 years ago

google.ar is also parked.

iso8859-1• 5 years ago

Google has also failed to buy their Soviet domain name: http://google.su/

And they even forgot about http://google.xn--vermgensberatung-pwb/

SllX• 5 years ago

Can you even buy .su domains anymore? I was under the impression that Russia was just sitting on it.

EDIT: answered my own question. It is apparently actively used.

Scoundreller• 5 years ago

for the longest time, i thought .su meant sudan.

worldofmatthew• 5 years ago

There are many more TLD that Google have not got.

FridayoLeary6• 5 years ago

somebody actually posted it as an 'ask hn' last night! I'm actually physically hurting right now. I wonder how much google will pay to get their precious domain back.

whitehouse3• 5 years ago

Can't they forcefully take it? [0]

[0] https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/cybersquatting-2013-05...

FridayoLeary6• 5 years ago

what is this then? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26907303

devrand2• 5 years ago

ccTLDs are special as they are entirely delegated to the countries that they're assigned to. WIPO offers UDRP servicing for ccTLDs, but they need to opt-in to it [1].

Notably .ar (and .su as the other responder to your comment notes) is not part of that. Therefore the process is going to depend upon the specific country/agency overseeing the ccTLD.

[1] https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/cctld/

guytpearson12• 5 years ago

Fun article, but they will get it back with relative ease. Happens all the time. Trademark domain.

FridayoLeary6• 5 years ago

Just like that? A court order $4 dollar refund and have a nice day? That's a bit anticlimatic.

techrat• 5 years ago

Not everything ends up turning into a Michael Bay movie when being resolved.

amelius2• 5 years ago

Is it still a trademark violation if they use the domain to sell something completely unrelated, e.g. shoes?

guytpearson12• 5 years ago

The problem with this is that Google isn't some generic term for something else. A lot of case law around this kind of stuff. Will get transferred back to Google in a heartbeat.

why_Mr_Anderson• 5 years ago

This is still happening? It used to be very annoying decade or so ago, but I thought it was already solved/fixed/improved.

Are there really no option to make a domain registration without expiration?

devrand2• 5 years ago

There's lot of different TLDs each with their own rules, fees, and registrars. It's hard to unify that landscape, particularly when a bunch of ccTLDs have very little infrastructure behind them.

The closest you can really get is hiring a mark protection firm like MarkMonitor which themselves are registrars for a handful of TLDs (namely .com) and can basically indefinitely extend registrations for everything they have contracts for.

goodcjw2• 5 years ago

Actually, it turns out http://google.ar/ might still be owned by someone else?

yreg• 5 years ago

The article talks about google.com.ar, not google.ar. Secondary .ar domains are generaly not available.

Franciscouzo• 5 years ago

.ar domains have been available to the public since last year.

Rohpakle• 5 years ago

However, minutes later after the manoeuvre, it was confirmed that Google has already recovered the domain.

I'm confused. It seems to me that this article just through some lines in it without further explanation.

solids• 5 years ago

Nobody knows what happened. Last night someone posted on twitter that google.com.ar was not working, then another one posted a screenshot from the Argentinean domain provider highlighting that the domain was registered by a random guy. Few hours later google.com.ar started working again, probably a single phone call from Google resolved the issue.

yosito2• 5 years ago

Meanwhile, I can't even figure out how to buy domains with my name in them from people who just buy them and sit on them.

danielmeskin• 5 years ago

If you figure it out let me know.

amelius2• 5 years ago

The internet's implementation of name resolving is wrong.

If you type "apple.com" you should get a disambiguation page saying "Did you mean the grocery store, the record company, or the computer company?" and from there you can reach the desired website. Somewhat like how it works in Wikipedia.

Unlike land, names are not a scarcity and can be shared. So why pretend they are like land?

throwaway36992• 5 years ago

Land can be shared just like names, and the reality is there's only so many disambiguations one can learn. Even with that ability, consumers are only going to remember one apple.com.

scubbo2• 5 years ago

This is a very interesting statement. My gut reaction is "no, that's wrong!", but I can't quite articulate _why_ that's wrong - so, please consider this reply in the spirit of an auto-Socratic dialogue, rather than an argument intended to dissuade you.

You're right that names themselves are not truly scarce*, but "convenience of being referenced by a name on the internet" most certainly _is_ a scarce resource. There can only be one "first resolved entity" - this is why companies invest in SEO**. So it seems like what you're actually arguing for (and apologies if I'm misrepresenting you here!) is a situation where it's not possible for the average internet consumer to directly reference a particular domain, but rather where all name-resolution queries _have to_ go through a hypothetical unbiased "top-level" search engine - one which indexes not documents, but domains. Is that right?

If that's the case, then we've then opened up several other problems: - who decides the order in which those results get displayed? You may not think it matters, but I can promise you that NEO ("Name Engine Optimization") would then become a lucrative industry. Apple-the-computer-company certainly wouldn't stand for being the third result for apple.com - how do direct links and bookmarks work? - If there's some sub-identifier ("apple.computer.com" resolves directly), then who assigns those sub-identifiers? If ICAAN or a similar organization, then we're right back at the current situation, but one level deeper - the IT company for the Apple grocery store would be fighting (with their wallet) against the Apple Computer company. - If direct links only work via IP addresses, well, the average consumer wouldn't be delighted with that; nor would print advertisers trying to share a human-memorable address

It's a tempting idea, for certain, but I can't see a way of implementing this that doesn't immediately give rise to the same problems one layer deeper. You've clearly thought about this more than I have, though, so I look forward to hearing more about it!

* though to an extent, they are; since there can not practically be multiple items of a given name within a category - if every man was named John, then we would need some other way to distinguish them, and so "John<-identifier>" would _become_ their name

** where, here, the "name" is a search term rather than a specific one-to-one address - and, yes, I recognize that that's not _quite_ the same thing

JoshTriplett2• 5 years ago

names are not a scarcity and can be shared

Domain names cannot be effectively shared between non-cooperating entities. Someone has to own the DNS A/AAAA/CNAME/etc records, and be able to change them at will. They have to point to someone's server. It doesn't matter what technological implementation underpins name resolution, it's a fundamentally important property that it must be possible to have exclusive ownership of a domain name.

If I'm trying to reach my bank, I need to know that I'm talking to my bank, and we have a whole technological stack designed to ensure that, including cryptographic authentication and public logs (Certificate Transparency) to make sure nobody can secretly tamper with that authentication.

Any system that cannot provide such authentication is not a viable naming scheme.

There's a long-standing concept that has been discussed many times that naming could be based entirely on that cryptographic authentication, without having any kind of "human-readable" name at all. However, such a system would not solve the full problem that needs solving; it would just mean there would then need to be a separate directory system to help people find the server they actually want and then talk securely to that server.

mitchdoogle• 5 years ago

Isn't that kind of the function of search engines?

nightfly• 5 years ago

I kind of like the new world of more TLDs to solve this. I really wish they weren't privately owned though.

apple.grocery apple.song/radio/fm apple.computer

3np2• 5 years ago

I think what you're looking for is a search engine.

7steps2much• 5 years ago

Hell, even if you happen to figure out the how, the prices some of those people want is just ridiculous.

jb775• 5 years ago

I'm also curious how people actually go about purchasing domains immediately after expiring. Like for example when Trump bought jebbush.com during primary season because it happened to expire then (and he temporarily re-routed it to his own site lol)...They must have done something more technical to lock it in, does anyone know?

stevekemp2• 5 years ago

Some registrars do offer the ability to "pre-order", waiting until a domain has expired and then snapping it up.

I own steve.org.uk, and after moving to Finland I noticed steve.fi was going to expire in the near-future. So I setup a cron-job that would text me the moment it became free.

First of all it went from registered to being in the redemption state, then it became generally available. I managed to register it once I'd woken up - though competition was less than I'd otherwise expect because at the time you needed to have a Finnish identity-number to register Finnish domains. I suspect that is no longer true.

tmk1108• 5 years ago

There is a domain name I wanted and the minimum offer price is 140k. I don't know even know who will pay for it, it's not like it can be used for a company name.

yosito2• 5 years ago

In my case, I can't even find prices or how to contact someone who might be willing to sell the domain, and I'd be happy to pay a few thousand dollars, though not 140k.

FractalHQ• 5 years ago

Domain squatting is scummy if you do it to should be ashamed of yourself imo

throwaway_kufu9• 5 years ago

I recently sold cryptocomicbook.com and decided to list some additional domains for sale, at the exact time I listed them a handful of ua.(TLDs) got listed for sale including ua.com and whoever listed them must have done it in bulk and given them all the same price ($76).

So I bought the ua.com for $76, at that point the seller must have realized what happened and immediately changed the sales price of all the other TLDs from $76 (example ua.co went from $76 to a min of $48,000), the marketplace confirmed the seller was verified as the owner or had authority to sell ua.com. Of course after the fact the marketplace reversed the transaction, they oddly reconfirmed the seller was verified/legit (I thought they would say the seller got past their verification but wasn’t legit), and they have refused to confirm why if the seller was legit that they reversed the sale transaction.

codezero6• 5 years ago

They reversed it because it was an honest mistake and most people like to know that if they make the same mistake it can be undone.

GordonS2• 5 years ago

I have to agree - although I'm surprised the registrant actually used common sense here, it was the fair thing to do.

masswerk2• 5 years ago

It may be worth noting that in most countries a contract essentially is established by the consensus of wills by the parties involved. An error in objecto ("I didn't mean the thing I accidentally said or listed") is a legitimate excuse and nullifies a contract. (The consensus didn't exist and thus the contract had never been established in the first place).

(This is also a reason why marketplaces, where things "just happen", are, let's say, complicated, as they do not adhere to this legal tradition.)

throwaway_kufu9• 5 years ago

Maybe...I tested your theory and asked them to reverse my recent sale of cryptocomicbook.com on the same basis and my request was declined.

In either case there is both contract law and state federal law (unfair trade practices) that would support my claim in the courts if I were so inclined.

dehrmann• 5 years ago

It's not a blockchain domain registry.

clukic• 5 years ago

As I read this I literally had a config file open in another window with references to ua.com. it's owned by UnderArmour and serves endpoints to their Fitness API.

This would have been one of the more interesting answers to the most common support question at my company: "Why wont my runs sync?"

stainforth• 5 years ago

Why should I believe in markets when transactions can just be reversed like this?

cj3• 5 years ago

If you walked into a car dealership and saw a price tag of $100 on a car that normally sells for $250,000, would you also lose faith in the dealership when they return your $100 and tell you the car was not meant to be priced at $100?

If anything, the example should boost your confidence in the marketplace. Marketplaces exist to provide a fair experience to both the buyer and the seller. Not just the buyer.

FridayoLeary6• 5 years ago

check this out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26907303

SirSourdough• 5 years ago

Sounds like a little-used TLD that ICANN has been trying to phase out for decades. Google has individual sites for most of countries that would have initially been under the umbrella of the .su (USSR) TLD, and .su apparently has 2% of the usage of .ru where Google already has a site.

Maybe they'll try to snap it up now that it's attracting a little attention but they probably just don't really care about it...

FridayoLeary6• 5 years ago

he's running a website under the name of google. You can play it down, but that's pretty cool.

Trias11• 5 years ago

Google probably threatened to abuse poor guy with legal action.

Similar to what MSFT did to the guy who totally legally registered mikerowesoft.com

utopcell2• 5 years ago

That is not how Google works.

dannyphantom• 5 years ago

In the end, Microsoft and Mike Rowe came to an agreement. In exchange for transferring control of his domain name, the software maker has promised to help Rowe set up a new Web site; pay for a Microsoft certification course and subscription to the Microsoft Developer Network Web site; and pay for his family to visit Microsoft Research Tech Fest in Redmond, Wash., in March. To top it all off, he will get an Xbox with some games.

From cnet: https://www.cnet.com/news/mikerowesoft-settles-for-an-xbox/

He did an AMA on reddit 11 years ago; he's apparently a full time poker player now. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ajsih/i_am_the_guy_wh...

schappim• 5 years ago

I love this line from the article "but when everyone suspected that the server had crashed, as is often the case..."

That must be a pretty big server!

_acco• 5 years ago

Among other exploits, you could generate an SSL cert and harvest cookies. All visitors would have to do is load your site in their browser. Right?

cube00• 5 years ago

Google is pretty good about pinning their certificates so it's unlikely this would work, especially in Chrome where it's locked down even further.

paxys2• 5 years ago

Certificate pinning has already been deprecated as a standard, and no browser supports it anymore. Google may be doing something else for their own properties on Chrome, but that is unlikely and definitely not widely known.

Edit: After a few minutes of internet searching it turns out that while HPKP is deprecated Google does statically pin a set of certs into the Chrome build itself, their own sites presumably included.

neonate• 5 years ago

https://archive.is/7nkiR

QUFB2• 5 years ago

It's not quite google.ar, but I'm still trying to figure out what to do with https://gnu.gl/

jshmrsn• 5 years ago

If GNU Project ever wanted to run a free Google alternative, GNUgl at gnu.gl would be a great fit.

QUFB2• 5 years ago

Once they become a community project, rather than the rms fan club, I'll talk to them.

livre• 5 years ago

Until a year or two ago (can't remember exactly) it wasn't possible to register a "naked" .ar domain and they were reserved for very special cases (government mostly). It had to be a .com.ar or .org.ar etc.

yuchi• 5 years ago

I once bought .org.it after some newspapaer misspelled our .it domain name as .org.it (which is a non-existant TLD) and I tried to regain the exposure.

They didn’t let me through though… :(

asimpletune• 5 years ago

Once I told my friend ja.red was available for $9, and after he bought it they told him it was a mistake and reversed the transaction.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 5 years ago

Out of curiosity, I queried about 100 DoH servers (open resolvers) for "google.com.ar". Every A record returned contained an IP address registered to Google.

ro_bit• 5 years ago

How much does Google pay MarkMonitor for this to happen?

CydeWeys• 5 years ago

It sounds like it might be a screw up at the registry end. Hard to say from the limited info available.

wlonkly• 5 years ago

MarkMonitor is surprisingly affordable (at scale). Their minimum buy is not cheap, but within that individual domains are, well, not retail price, but not far off either.

They "make it up in volume" by giving you an incentive to keep your entire domain portfolio together, even when you really only care about MarkMonitor levels of care for a subset of them.

Advanced features like registry lock and local presence are also affordable-but-not-cheap.

(A lot of their more proactive brand and trademark management has been spun off to other divisions of Clarivate who acquired them some years ago.)

sbassi• 5 years ago

It was wrong, not so wrong, since it could have been worse, like a scammer who could had setup a fake page. Instead, the person didn't even park the DNS, just left it without resolution. This helped everybody realize there was a problem.

gonational• 5 years ago

Wait, didn't our version of Google also fall into the wrong hands?

ThisWasTaken• 5 years ago

I'd just make it redirect to duck.com or remake the site (Google.com) and change all the icons / buttons to ones drawn with paint.

mderazon• 5 years ago

How did Google reclaim it ? What is the mechanism in DNS that allows someone to take ownership of someone else's domain and so quickly ?

Is it just because it's Google ? or is there something that allows anyone who previously owned a domain to claim it back ?

Argentine version of Google falls into “wrong” hands

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