A hacker took down Google's Play Store twice in an outage that few would have noticed but could cause some serious disruption.
According to CNN, the Google's Developer Console first crashed mid-day Sunday. Many app developers still found themselves blocked from uploading to the Google Play Store on Monday.
The situation appeared to be fixed and then the hacker had another go and the problem started again.
When the system is down Android users don't have access to new apps and updates but if you do not know that you are due for one you probably would not realise. Existing apps are still available for download.
Nobody's business but the Turks
The hacker was a Turk called Ibrahim Balic who said that he noticed a flaw when the developer console crashed while trying to test a vulnerability he discovered.
Balic wrote an app to exploit the flaw, which he expected to fail. However, he said he did not expect it to knock everyone offline as well. He has pleaded for forgiveness from other developers.
The site crashed again when he uploaded the app to Google's publishing system a second time. Balic said that he "just wanted to be sure about the vulnerability."
Balic notified Google of the issue but has not heard back. Various online forums are suggesting that he should get a good lawyer.
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