Google: Turkey Intercepting Our Internet Name Servers

Turkey likely attempting to prevent people from using Google to circumvent ban on YouTube and Twitter.


Google has confirmed that Turkey is blocking its public Domain Name System (DNS) service, which translates numeric Internet Protocol addresses into the names used for websites, CNET reported on the weekend.

Google received several credible reports and "confirmed" with its own research that its DNS service is being intercepted by most Turkish Internet service providers, software engineer Steven Carstensen wrote on Google's security blog on Saturday.

While not directly stated in the blog post, it seems likely that Google's public DNS servers are being blocked to prevent people from circumnavigating Turkey's ban on sites like YouTube and Twitter.

Carstensen equated the Web misdirection to someone changing phone numbers in a phone book.

"Imagine if someone had swapped out your phone book with another one, which looks pretty much the same as before, except that the listings for a few people showed the wrong phone number. That's essentially what's happened: Turkish ISPs have set up servers that masquerade as Google's DNS service."

The Turkish government took Twitter offline on March 20 after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced the site in the wake of allegations of political corruption spread across the social network. A week later, Turkey's telecommunications authority instituted a ban against YouTube.