Italy's Piracy Shield just blocked one of Google's CDN

[johnklos]

Companies like Google and Cloudflare just really don't care that they host malicious content and have stopped taking meaningful action to take down reported content. That they'd be blocked at some point is completely unsurprising.

As it is, I have to explain to people regularly that clicking on "sponsored" links, or whatever Google calls them, doesn't work because we have to block "googleadservices.com" due to their hosting of malicious Javascript payloads. Certain very large companies that are very, very privacy and security focused insist on blocking known malicious Javascript hosting services, and Google is no exception.

[bithead]

I think it's possible they may. I used to get 50 - 150 of those "I hacked the camera on your computers and videoed you wacking. Pay me bitcoins and I won't release it to all your friends". Many come from .kz, .cn, .in, and various others. I'd notify those ISP NOCs that their networks are being used of obvious criminal activity and criminals love to break into servers and networks. I also put in bitcoin abuse reports using the IP addresses that sourced the emails.

Google addresses started show up about 4 - 6 months ago; their IPv6 addresses. So I prominently mentioned in those bitcoin abuse reports that google should make any effort at all to secure their servers and notified their NOC/security email addresses. I also mentioned their addresses would appear in those public bitcoin abuse reports.

After a couple of months the google addresses stopped appearing as sources.

NOTE: I used a honeypot email address to snare these emails.

[ruthmarx]

> Companies like Google and Cloudflare just really don't care that they host malicious content and have stopped taking meaningful action to take down reported content.

Honestly I find it incredibly silly companies are still sending out notices to take down copyrighted content. Give up already. The battle is lost and now it's purely a waste of time and money.

[SkiFire13]

I could see your point if the block was after a takedown request and Google did not comply, but this didn't happen. "Piracy Shield" doesn not send out takedown notices, _it just blocks IPs_ reported by a set of _private companies_.

[tourmalinetaco]

They will happily boot legal websites off while defending animal torture and CSAM. I’ve made many reports to Cloudflare, Google, and the FBI when I come across said websites and so far I have yet to see any be even kicked off Google search let alone Cloudflare.

[izacus]

Why do some of you so badly, sickly want companies like Google to be the police and block your content on their whim?

This site is full of proof they're biased and incompetent, why are you so prepared to give them rights that belong to governments?

[cute_boi]

well big companies use thousands of virus scanner, so this shouldn't be a big issue.

[lormayna]

The problem exists in Italy: criminal organizations sell a box (called "pezzotto") that connect to illegal streams (mainly sport events). But the law to block it was written in a very terrible way and this tool is even worst.

[dylan604]

Pezzotto sounds like it would pair well with a nice chianti.

[ranger_danger]

Ironically from not-Italy:

Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead

Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to mil04s43-in-f1.1e100.net

Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN

[VoidWhisperer]

Likely having to do with the cert being for *.googleusercontent.com, and that is decidedly not *.googleusercontent.com

[fulafel]

The link is bad from a web browser POV so that's correct - it's using the DNS name from the ip address reverse lookup, but the web server cert there identifies to a different Google DNS name which would point to the same address. (But the point was to point to this CDN node and you can't really link to it on HN in any other way)

[xanth]

Likewise, here in aus on a FireFox 131.0.3

[BLKNSLVR]

My 'uninvited activity'[0] system picks up quite a bit from googleusercontent, but also gets a bit from 1e100 network ranges, which is a bit surprising / disappointing.

I have to add exclusions for some google-owned network ranges just so my auto-blocking setup doesn't break some basics critical to just web browsing.

[0]:https://github.com/UninvitedActivity/UninvitedActivity

[LAC-Tech]

Link not working.

Though the term "Piracy Shield" is very editorialised. Shouldn't we just call it the Firewall? Eg what we call China's system.

[PhasmaFelis]

Link's not working for me.

[cynicalsecurity]

Why would Italy have anything called Piracy Shield? Is it located in the West or in China?

[devjab]

To combat illegal sports streaming and betting. On a deeper level it is to combat major crime organisations on a financial level. Italy actually has a lot of initiatives to do these things, though some obviously work better than others. One of the better is how every budget has to has through a government service, to tack illegal activities both internally and across borders. Many EU countries have various things like this, though in Italy is far more focused on the financial aspects because Italy obviously has a big past of organised crime to the point where these organisations rivalled the nation station.

The piracy shield is terribly implemented of course and does a lot of harm to things it wasn’t necessarily meant to target. Part of this is because the law itself is rather terrible and has already undergone multiple changes and amendments, but part of it is also that Italy has a rather tough “no fucks” policy toward major tech companies.

[PeterStuer]

The real question is: how did you come to believe 'the West' does not censor?

[Mr_Minderbinder]

If I recall correctly they were also the first Western country (or the first country overall outside of China) to implement lockdowns, at a time when everyone was saying that we couldn’t do them and that lockdowns could only happen in a country like China.

[sadbutttrue]

All European countries censor the Internet to some extent.

OpenDNS is not operating in France and Portugal, for example. There are many other cases.

Sometimes it's because of piracy, sometimes it's because of terrorism, sometimes it's because it allows voters to post comments about immigration or vaccine policy, or criticism about certain Western allies committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing, etc.

[nerder92]

Here a thread with some tests to confirm this: https://x.com/g_bonfiglio/status/1847728976933904453

[raffraffraff]

Tbh, screw Google. They think that their monopoly makes them untouchable, so they abuse their position. Eg: yesterday my wife's friend group received an email from one member of the group. It contained 10 links. Other Gmail users replied-to-all. But my wife (not a Gmail user) had her reply blocked because the email contained 10 links. She was replying to the person who sent the email.

Pardon my language, but fuck you Google. If you want to implement mail filtering rules, do it fairly and equally.

[aquatica]

If you are connecting from an Italian ISP to https://mil04s43-in-f1.1e100.net you're going to be greeted by a message from AGCOM telling you the website has been used to spread copyrighted content.

This already happened with a Cloudflare CDN before. https://community.cloudflare.com/t/blocking-of-my-website-vi...

https://imgur.com/a/EKFHROX

[cdesai]

How can they do that with HTTPS though?

HTTP sure they can happily MITM and redirect, but with HTTPS you need a valid cert.

[patchymcnoodles]

I don't get that, and I'm connecting from the biggest italian provider TIM. I first get a warning from the browser because of the certificate. If I go forward I just get a 404. But maybe it changed in the last hours?

[olliej]

Wow I can’t believe that no one thought this could happen /s