About That Google Server Breach

4 Comments

1. 1

   Josh Parmely

   January 14, 2010 at 12:48 pm

   Nowhere in Google’s blog post did they mention that there was an ACTUAL infrastructure breech. The Gmail accounts that were accessed by the hackers are no more or no less susceptible to phishing and virus/logging/session jacking attacks than other hosts, and no amount of encryption can prevent the owner of the account from making costly errors in judgment.

   Just theorizing, I suppose it could very well be a cover-up of an actual security (data center) breech, but we’ll never know unless the person that did the penetration comes out in the open and explains how it was done. I’d say that if any company is likely to admit such a egregious mistake, Google would be the one. Then again, more oft than not, it is incredibly difficult to detect a company’s deceit without any supporting evidence.

2. 2

   tz

   January 14, 2010 at 12:59 pm

   To echo the earlier poster,

   I think it was a large amount of attempted but failed penetration with a similarly large and somewhat successful attempted phishing, scriptography, malware, dictionary attacks, etc.

   The data in the cloud cannot be more secure than your password, or more properly, logon credentials since the timed passwords or one-time-use passwords would also qualify.

3. 3

   patrickkaine

   January 15, 2010 at 5:07 am

   Gmail goes HTTPS a few days after…. coincidence? No way.

4. 4

   Thibault

   January 18, 2010 at 2:56 am

   Well I doubt very much about that thesis.

   It would mean for them discovering a new breach in Internet Explorer, a real one acknoledged later by microsoft (cf. http://secunia.com/advisories/38209/ ).

   Then going after the Chinese government…

   Too high a risk.

   Remember that, supposing the attack was real (which in my opinion is the case) even then it was difficult for them to make the decision to take the chance to have to go from China.

   Then imagine how they would feel it the whole attack was a pretended one…

   I really think google is good at what they do but doing better than the CIA or etc. I think that’s not were they are good at and that’s good like that.

   Remember too that 16 companies were attacked under the same attack, that would make the scenario very big indeed !

   I am sorry but this is pure speculation.
   I think this is detrimental because those attacks reveals the true nature of chinese government and everything that creates confusion arorund that helps the chinese government remaining hidden.

   You have to bear in mind also how the chinses government reacted to google’s reaction to cease enforcing their censorship and pointing to them as responsible for this attack.

   The chinese government prevented access to google.cn from inside China, I do not think they would have done that if that attack had been invented, they would have taken the opportunity to show that they are the victim of a comunication campaign.
   For a dictatirship presenting themselves as a victim is a tremendous oppotunity, think of the Iranian government trying deperately to present domestic unrest as organised by foreign countries…

   To Conclude imagine what the Obama administration would say if they realised, after having officially protested to the chinese through the voice of Mrs Clinton, among the first time ever for an affair involving a private company, that the whole affair was a hoax ?

   I am afraid to say that that thesis does not hold five seconds, impossible.

   best regards to Gina Trapani

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