Yesterday (Wednesday), Google announced that they have fixed a bug in their Gmail system that allows any hacker to break into other people’s Gmail accounts and read their mail, posing as legitimate users. [Sorry, link no longer available.]
“The process for exploiting Gmail was posted to a hacker web site.
The site says Google fixed the problem on October 18, four days after a security researcher called ANELKAOS alerted the company to the problem.”
Google also didn’t make any previous announcement of the bug.
“Companies such as Microsoft typically alert their users to security flaws in their software.
‘Usually if you’re a vendor and you have some sort of security problem, you have to publish it,” said Cesar Cerrudo, CEO of security consultancy Argeniss. “You also have to let people know that you have fixed it and that you take security seriously.'”
It looks like Google isn’t “perfect” after all as many think it is!