How Cosmic Rays Steal Your Web Traffic

A single bit-flip caused by cosmic radiation or failing hardware can send you to the wrong website. Hackers exploit this by registering domains that differ from famous sites by just one binary digit.

Computers translate domain names into binary, and sometimes random cosmic rays or memory errors cause that data to flip a zero into a one. If that happens while you are typing a web address, your request changes just enough to land on a different server. Opportunistic attackers register these error-prone versions of popular domains to capture the redirected traffic. It is a strange intersection of deep space physics and digital deception.