Can Google's page cache be poisoned? A possible example.

1 point

15 years ago

I've tried going through the appropriate channels (including tweeting @MattCutts) but haven't recieved a response. Therefore, I figure I'd bring this in front of the community in general (and knowing Matt reads this) to raise awareness of the issue.

The issue is it may be possible to poison Google's page cache. I'm unsure of the means, but nevertheless, I've at least been able to provide one example.

So suppose you search google for "search jungle disk" to figure out why you can't search your JungleDisk volumes (to find out you don't have the Enterprise version)...

Here's the query string: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=search+jungle+disk

This is a result you'll be linked to: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kD4X3vNgTUwJ:blog.jungledisk.com/2009/04/28/jungle-disk-261-released/+search+jungle+disk&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

This is the cached version of that result: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kD4X3vNgTUwJ:blog.jungledisk.com/2009/04/28/jungle-disk-261-released/+search+jungle+disk&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Now if you look at the cached result, it seems that JungleDisk is trying to sell me some cheap Reductil. Lots of it. With no prescription! Moreover there are plenty of keywords and strings - some in foreign languages - peppered throughout the cached document. This also appears to occur in

Perhaps this isn't Google's problem, and is instead a problem with JungleDisk's blog being compromised in some respect. The question I pose to HN is - have you seen this before? If so, can you cite some examples -- if this is a real problem, I think it's in all of our interest that this be nipped in the bud.

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