Problem report for Teen Exposes Google Security Flaw, Partially Fixed Overnight

Slimy   on 03 January 2007 - 16:07 · 10 comments & 4845 views

Advertisement (Why?)

The story has been reproduced below for your reference as you make a report. You may file the report below.

Acting very quickly, Google fixed the security hole on Jan. 1 after being notified of its existence on Dec. 30. According to reports online, however, the flaw was only partly corrected. The flaw can exploit, either via a website or by manually inserting code into a user’s web browser, users who have logged into Gmail, Blogger or other Google services with their Google accounts. An attacker could potentially send malicious messages with viruses or malware to people on an exposed contact list.

The vulnerability was discovered by 16-year-old Haochi Chen of Columbus, Ohio. He was tinkering with an undocumented feature of the Google Video service that allows a user to e-mail videos to anyone in their Gmail contact list. According to Chen, Google responded to his alert within 30 hours after he reported the flaw to them. Google patched the problem on Monday morning. According to ZDNet’s Googling Google blog, the vulnerability was "only partially fixed. The author of the blog, Garret Rogers wrote: "I recommend you log out of Gmail when you are not using it until the problems are solved.”

View: Googling Google
News source: CBC News


Problem Report

Please paste the problematic text into this text area.

Why is the quoted text a problem? Please type details on typos or misinformation here.

Advertisement (Why?)