REN-ISAC blacklists the whole of Appengine as a phishing site

48 views
Skip to first unread message

Luca de Alfaro

unread,
Feb 17, 2020, 1:23:41 PM2/17/20
to Google App Engine
Dear All,

I recently have became aware that REN-ISAC is blacklisting the whole of Google Appengine, classifying it as a phishing site.

REN-ISAC, apparently, is a provider of information on reputable domains to universities, and it apparently considers phishing all sites that redirect to ghs.googlehosted.com , which is the general address for sites hosted on Appengine.
I realized because access to Google Appengine sites was blocked by my university (University of California, Santa Cruz) today.  They reopened it for a couple of sites that were immediately needed, but all the rest may be still blocked. From our sysadmins:

They found that one or more of these sites were resolving to
ghs.googlehosted.com which is known to be on a threat list from REN-ISAC.
We believe that was causing the block.

It might be a good idea if someone from Google reached out to REN-ISAC and explained them that ghs.googlehosted.com is one of the main hosting addresses for Google Cloud Apps...  I can also reach out to them, but I somewhat doubt it would have the same effect.

Many thanks, and all the best,

Luca

Pierre-Yves (Google Cloud Support)

unread,
Feb 18, 2020, 3:37:16 PM2/18/20
to Google App Engine
Hi Luca,

Thank you for notifying us, we will look into it.

Luca de Alfaro

unread,
Feb 19, 2020, 8:26:48 AM2/19/20
to Google App Engine
REN-ISAC just told me that they will revert it in their next roll-out. Thanks for being responsive.

Pierre-Yves (Google Cloud Support)

unread,
Feb 19, 2020, 9:17:45 AM2/19/20
to Google App Engine
We appreciate the follow up Luca.
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages