Google applications, including YouTube, email, GoogleDocs and even Google Play ,features, have suffered a rare service disruption, with users unable to access many of the company's services.
The blackout in the services of the global internet giant has affected the cryptocurrency industry and several users have reported a problem making withdrawals from crypto exchanges in Brazil and around the world as many of them, such as Binance, Bitfinex, and Foxbit in Brazil, request confirmation for actions by cashout via link sent to email.
The outage started just before 9 am in Brazil with Google sites returning server errors when visited.
Users around the world have reported problems with Gmail, Google Drive, Android Play Store, Maps and more.
Around 9:40 am in Brazil, services were apparently reestablished but with slow and fluctuating services.
To date, Google has not said what caused the disruption to its services.
Hacker Attack
Although Google has not yet officially commented on what happened, security experts say the company has suffered a hacker attack.
The target of the hackers would have been directly Alphabet (the company that controls all services linked to Google).
The attack was allegedly coordinated from England to bring down the company's servers located in Europe.
US government sources suspect the perpetrators are Russian hackers.
This would not be the first time that Google has undergone a massive attack and seeks to bring down its services worldwide.
In 2017 hackers linked to the Government of China would have been responsible for the biggest DDoS attack in history.
According to the world internet giant, the attack was reportedly carried out by the hacker group APT31 and the aim was to bring down the company's servers.
The attack involved no less than 2.5 Tbps of data hitting Google's servers. Also according to revelations from the company's Threat Analysis Group, the attack lasted about 6 months using different methods that aimed at different company services, often simultaneously.
