Update: Danny Sullivan disagrees with some of my points, and adds a few other security incidents to the list.
Google is pushing full steam ahead with their office strategy, and their hope is to convince a lot of individuals and businesses to trust Google enough to store their documents on Google’s servers instead of their own computers, or servers under their control.
The fact that unauthorized document access is a simple password guess or government “request” away already works against them. But the steady stream of minor security incidents we’ve seen (many very recently) can also hurt Google in the long run. Running applications for businesses is serious stuff, and Google needs to be diligent about security.
Another minor incident came up this evening - a Google employee intended to post on her personal blog and wrote on the official Google blog covering Blogger instead.
Earlier security incidents:
July 2004: Gmail security issue allows unauthorized access to others’ registration information.
January 2005: Gmail security flaw allows unathorized viewing of others’ emails.
November 2005: Gmail bug allowed hackers to take complete control of a victim’s Gmail account.
March 2006: Google accidentally deletes its main official blog. They write “We’ve determined the cause of tonight’s outage. The blog was mistakenly deleted by us (d’oh!)”
July 2006: Writely document appears that seems to show internal confidential Google information on the Platypus project.
October 2006: Google blog hacked and fake post published, quickly taken down.
October 2006: User complains that blog posts through the Blogger API are being published on someone else’s blog.
October 2006: Google accidentally releases Google Platypus software.
Google product teams work in cells, which allows them to quickly launch and iterate products. However, there could be a disadvantage to this as well with regard to security, as their does not seem to be one central policy or security group ensuring strict compliance across the entire company. Every security incident damages Google’s credibility and reputation. Microsoft has been dealing with security issues forever - Google may need to start fighting the same war.
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Seems like a recent article from ajaxian is relevant here. There is a proof of concept app that uses the browser to encrypt the data before sending it to the server meaning that the company cannot access the data even if they wanted to. The key for the encrypted data is stored in the browser with a password required to unlock it. So to get data stored on the server you must have a browser with the right key and a password. No government request or screwup will cause a companies data to be compromised (unless someone at the company messes up)
Obviously this is all pretty “proof-of-concept” right now but it sounds like an interesting approach to this problem.
http://ajaxian.com/archives/ha.....nt-sharing
please tell me how secure Zoho products are!!!!!
Google should innovate on the password policy. Right now using a single password user can use all google products which is a efficient process, and the cookies ensure that until the browser is closed, user is still logged in.
But i think that even though this is very convenient, i am worried that if someone gets my password, by hacking the browser session, or just using a keylogger (office computer), they can just open my docs, spreadsheets, everything. I was never worried with email all these years of using it though it was the same scenario, anybody who got the password could have opened the email and checked all my attachments and emails. But now since i have started using google products so regularly ( including on my mobile phone) i am worried about security (particularly on mobile phone) big time.
Michael,
We have done quite a bit of work on this issue of trust, and I think it resolves itself into 2 main areas:
(i) Will people trust *any* enterprise to keep all of their personal data in a digital form?
(ii) If they do, who will they trust - commercial startups, corporates, not for profits, regulated or government constructs?
Most of the testing we have done (and seen) seems to resolve itself into 2 broad groups right now:
- those who do understand the issues - by and large they are not keen on giving *any* player their data - and if they do, they want it regulated (we also picked up some concern about US data protection laws vs European ones)
- those who don’t understand - they will probably go with “trusted” brands, though what “trusted” constitutes is up for debate.
Personally, I suspect one (or more) commercial “trusted” party will eventually be tempted to misuse the data, and there will then be an ensuing scandal and call for government regulation so it may just be easier to go for that first.
Would I give any one of these guys my aggregated data now - No Way…I think they are just not anywhere near competent when it comes to ensuring security. My ideal would be a peer to peer system wher my data is on my systems, and I control access to it.
Seriously, this blog post is just human error. Are you guys trying to say EVERYONE at techcrunch (and every other site) are perfect? I know I’ve deleted documents on a clients server by accident.
Go cry wolf about this. The gmail stuff is valid, but this?
Many organisations’ documents and spreadsheets are far more commercially sensitive than emails. If ‘…the gmail stuff is valid’, human error, then surely these documents are even more valuable and worthy of feature on TechCrunch?
I for one would take extreme care before recommending google docs to any organisation when their security issues can easily be solved using OpenOffice without much loss of functionality. Collaboration in Google Docs is way cool, though, so it might be appropriate for some organisations to draft documents of low sensitivity, particularly if they are inter-organisational documents.
Remember Microsoft used to be the giant that no one thought could be toppled. It is still a giant but a kinder and gentler one. Google is peaking now and may be for a while, but it will settle down eventually.
With the issue of using Google to keep my documents - no way.
Syn, as far as Google being singled out here, it’s probably a combination of (1) how badly Google wants your information on their servers, and (2) Google is usually treated as the company that can do no wrong.
Another Gmail outage yesterday doesn’t help my confidence, either.
They’ve had a few bumps, but most of these are not serious and deal with attacks on Google not users of Google’s products. Google is a big target and some will do their best to make it look weak by attacking things like the official google blog (which is where most of these slip ups appear to be) but my guess is that these people don’t really care about your data - unless you’re google (or perhaps mike arrington) you’re not the target.
Their are different types of trust, even if I don’t trust 100% that my documents won’t somehow end up in some government officials hands at some point I trust that I will be able to reach my documents on a Google server, that’s more than I can say for my twice crashed laptop. At this point it’s more important for me to make sure I can access my documents than it is for me to worry about the remote possibility that someone else might. And I certainly trust Google to protect my rights more than I trust any web based alternative - remember google stood up to the DOJ when Yahoo and Microsoft went along willingly.
That Google feels more comfortable cooperating with the Chinese communists than the U.S. government doesn’t earn them points with me.
Since they keep every bit of info that comes in, seemingly with plans to keep it for all eternity, their responsibility is going way up and the hacks just aren’t so cute anymore. Google’s a bigger and bigger target, how long before one of these breaches results in a hacker releasing AOL-like search logs? What a shitstorm that’ll be…
They should be using separate accounts between the corporate blogs and personal blogs so something like this can’t happen.
They wanted my trust and I gave it - I have used GMail in fact my entire office at Socialtext uses GMail instead of using an exchange server - the idea here being we are also part of Office 2.0 and should support others out there that are part of our group - an office with out Microsoft exchange.
I was in love with my Gmail, I set it up to pop serv into my email client on my Mac iBook - is was easy to set up and I was living the email life, it didn’t even feel like I didn’t have an exchange server. This was really working - they had me - a fan forever, and a product champion convincing others to do the same as I had.
And then it all came crashing down - Monday afternoon at 1:15pm my fantasy with google ended - I got error message after error message my password did not match my email client said - I reset everything, I even reinstalled the F*&(%$@ Software - I sent in a bug report detailing what I had done. I read the help pages, I called my friend who works on Macs, I joined a google group to ask for help. NOTHING- I sent another bug report - NOTHING.
It was determined by those smarter than I that it was not my computer, not my email client - it was GOOGLE - and they were not responding - I sent at least 3 bug reports none where responded to. When I worked at Amazon we had a company standard of getting back to people within 24 hrs. I live via my email as I am sure we all do. And to be honest it’s not just the lost email. It’s the fact that I spent all of Tuesday trying to work out how to fix it. Google once again proves the fact that THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH - pay with your duckets or pay with your time. So as of today at 10:30 am on Wednesday I have not heard back from Google - and they want me to trust them with documents - forget it. I will never and I encourage you all to refuse.
There is a great point that is at debate here - we heard about it at my Office 2.0 conference - is Software as a Service a must have? I would rather pay 40 bucks a month to have my gmail work - then to have it not work and to not even receive a reply - I want my Software but I want the service, I want to be able to have someone troubleshoot in a timely fashion when something does not work and I can not fix it.
And if you work at Google and are reading this - please HELP…….
Preach it, Julia. The cache feature in my installation of Google Desktop Search just up and died. So I did what us good little end users are supposed to do and posted about the problem on Google Groups (http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Desktop_Something-Broken).
Been two weeks now and Google still hasn’t bothered to help at all.
One more for the security-incidents list (September): http://web2.commongate.com/pos.....earch_page
The whole system of username-password protection is a complete joke. This is how 99% of the world gets to their web service, from Etrade and Intuit down to Google, Myspace, YouTube and JoeWeb20r.com. There are millions of mysql databases out there with approximately nothing but a “Select UserName, Password from Account” to protect them. JoeWeb20r.com’s programmers not given the incentive to spend the time to do whatever Intuit, Etrade etc. do. JoeWeb20r.com (who you gave your username-password-petname combo to last month) got its development done for $500, remember?
Some people are using the same password on Flickr/Intuit/Etrade/etc. as on JoeWeb20.com (and YouTube, and Myspace, and Google XYZ). People don’t use password managers unless someone makes them. When JoeWeb20r.com gets hacked (or its “assets” get on eBay), someone is very close to getting access to Jack’s Etrade account, with disastrous consequences. Joe’s “d’oh!” doesn’t help Jack with the disaster. Its the group’s problem.
Who knows whether Google XYZ service (or YouTube or MySpace) is more like ETrade or like JoeWeb20r.com, but you can bet that there are some programmers on staff who in the course of getting 0.8 together put encrypting the password or sessionid on their “Nice To Have” list. Don’t fault them for being lazy - they are only human.
When the security breaches happen at Big Business, maybe someone loses their job (big deal), but the lawsuit that follows doesn’t work — the lawyers get >> $10M and the people with the disaster get $50 bills (or is it Adwords credits now?), and Big Business regards it as a cost of doing business, a “tax”. It doesn’t matter if its your emails and search history, GM pension plan, SUV defect, or Vioxx — The value system with regards to your life is: Big Business is more important than You, Human. Everyone for themselves! Life is a risk. Take it!
Kudos for informing/reminding people of the potential consequences of the ever possible security breach. No company is perfect, and unfortunately the laws covering the accidentally release of information and disclosure of such events to the data owners are extremely weak in this country… you can’t rely on being informed if/when a breach occurs. Google offers a wide range of different services which, when used, can acquire a wide range of sensitive information… the vast majority if not all of which is tied together not only through account login, but also through casual contact with google servers via the user’s GUID cookie (and to a degree possibly their IP address). There could literally be years worth of collected and associated information stored on google’s servers. So think not in terms of “these particular documents could be at risk” but “all the information we’ve ever directly or indirectly submitted to google could be at risk”. A dossier is more than the sum of its parts.
I noticed a security flaw in Google Calendar:
http://www.philfreo.com/blog/?p=2
Interesting certain comments just varnish from this site !!
@ Julia French
Welcome to the downside of Software as a Service
For the foreseeable future I think companies will have to keep some capability and data in their own systems, as ASP / Webservices are just not robust enough for most B2B plays.
For what its worth my advice to clients is to have (at worst) a 24 hour response (depending on system criticality obviously) but that you can operate for 2 days without access to the service, that seems to be a robust time for any decent service provider to get back up to speed.
By the way, having run real time systems and real time system companies I can tell you that its a nightmare when that happens, I feel some sympathy with the Google team trying to rectify it.
I still have no email…anyone out there have an idea as to how I can get Google’s attention - send it if you do….
Hmm…glad I don’t do Blogger any more. Was not thrilled when Beta required me to register for a ‘Google Account’
Hmm i don’t seem to have undergone any of these mishaps guess it will happen thow
Its about ownership. When you have a doc on your machine or on a thumb drive or (if your a company) on a server behind YOUR firewall, its yours.
Even an UNSUCCESSFUL hacking attempt can be prosecuted.
When you docs are on Google servers, you legally have no ownership rights to that document and can be denied access or have the document shared for many reasons or mishaps beyond your control.
I admire google for trying this, as most people dont even trust big companies with their phone numbers and social security number and addresses (because those companies always lied or ommitted the usage and sale of such data)
So I think its a big leap of faith that anyone would trust them with whole archives of documents sensitive or not. Its really a big brother move and as bad as MS Office is, I dont see this working without some new security technology in play.
The thing that gets me the most about google is that their google hosted email service doesn’t work nearly as well as plain old gmail. I set it up for one of the companies I work for and they just plain stopped receiving part of their email. It didn’t go to the spam folder or anything, it just disappeared.
On top of that there were a number of stupid little bugs, one in box claimed to be 100% full when it was in fact using no more that 5% of the allowed 2 gigs. Another just ran incredibly slowly for no apparent reason. Email’s took 8+ hours to come in, and the interface had a good 60+ seconds in between clicking something and seeing any discernible result.
They did fix the slow inbox and respond to *some* of the other complaints, but disappearing email is a show stopper and they didn’t respond to that.
And I’m not the only one with trouble: http://www.456bereastreet.com/.....ing_gmail/
People go on about trust and security, meanwhile you’ve got piles of your documents stored as attachments on gmail, hotmail, yahoo, etc.
Either in your “sent” box, or in the mailbox of whoever you sent the documents to. So what’s the big deal? You’ve all been storing documents online for years, now you can edit them.
i like
Compare this to most other companies?
I may be way off base…..blame it on the blonde,if you will…..but I thought Google and Blogger were one in the same.
Sorry…..
A confused blogger,
Tammi in Texas
If we all wait for Google to repond to an enquiry, we’ll be waiting a very long time. For a Company concerned with Communication, it sucks at it!
At least Blogger is trying - very trying.
By the way, I couldn’t see two of the Images posted here. Maybe Blogger needs to see that, too. I’ve done no good reporting the problem of vanishing photos.
Any new news on the Google privacy topic?