The reason behind the “We’re sorry…” message

Posted by Niels Provos, Anti-Malware Team

Some of you might have seen this message while searching on Google, and wondered what the reason behind it might be. Instead of search results, Google displays the “We’re sorry” message when we detect anomalous queries from your network. As a regular user, it is possible to answer a CAPTCHA – a reverse Turing test meant to establish that we are talking to a human user – and to continue searching. However, automated processes such as worms would have a much harder time solving the CAPTCHA. Several things can trigger the sorry…