Google, fresh off the farm of defending last month’s leak of 500,000 or so users’ sensitive information, has just been hit by another Internet hijacking — the “worst ever,” according to the company that caught the hack.
And what’s most eye-opening is the hack is the likely work of Russian and Chinese sources.
Come on now Google. Can you or can you not protect users’ data? A concerned country of apparently compromised American citizens want to know.
And if it’s “not,” then perhaps a new business venture is needed. Word is, Walmart is hiring.
From the Daily Mail: “Google has been hit by the ‘worst ever’ Internet hijack in the company’s history, security experts say. Information from users’ Google searches, cloud-hosting services and the company’s bundle of collaboration tools for businesses — known as G Suite — were all affected.”
Servers in Nigeria, China and Russia apparently intercepted the data as part of — get this — the respective governments’ collective “wargame experiment” program.
Well that’s comforting.
Even more quote-unquote comforting is the fact Google downplayed the hack by first acknowledging that yes, a hijack of data did occur but then soothing, a la “nothing to fear here, go home, folks”-type attitude, that the hijacking was hardly of the malicious variety.
Two words: Not. Impressed.
“Alex Henthorn-Iwane, an executive at ThousandEyes, called Monday’s [hacking] incident the worst affecting Google that his San Francisco company has seen,” the Daily Mail went on. “He said he suspected nation-state involvement because the traffic was effectively landing at state-run China Telecom.”
Ahh, a clue.
More than Google’s crackerjack team of security would have, it seems.
And here’s why it matters to America’s national security: As one computer scientist told the Daily Mail, “access to people’s data is a ‘strategic asset’ for surveillance. … Most data like your online messages are encrypted, meaning anyone with access to that data could not easily read them. But while they could not read the messages themselves, they could track who talked to whom, when and for how long. This would be useful information to help build up intelligence data on high-profile individuals of interest to foreign governments.”
Not cool, Google. Particularly not cool given this isn’t the first time the company’s been breached.
Once again — same as the last hack with Google — the message is clear: This world of emerging technology brings many benefits and advantages. But the tradeoff is security and privacy. The danger is online data is never — no matter how much it’s promised and guaranteed — safe and secure from hacks and breaches and hijacks and thefts. And don’t let any government or corporate entity suggest otherwise.
First appeared at The Washington Times.
