Yesterday aftenoon, Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond announced Google plans to re-evaluate their relationship with China, after acknowledging the Internet giant had suffered a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" believed to have originated in China. In the announcement, Drummond noted that at least twenty other companies were also targeted in the attacks. In a separate announcement, Adobe has acknowledged that its own servers were similarly breached.
An anonymous Google source told IDG's Robert McMillan the malware used in the attack targeted "internal intercept" systems which McMillan explained are "used to help Google comply with search warrants by providing data on Google users".
Ironically, the targeted attack has been attributed to an as yet undisclosed vulnerability in Adobe Reader and/or Acrobat. In recent years, vulnerabilities in Adobe products have been so frequent and pervasive that the subsequent security concerns prompted an uprecedented warning from Stephen Northcutt, president of the SANS Technology Institute. In an August 2009 SANS NewsByte, Northcutt cautioned corporations to "avoid Adobe if possible" and said "Adobe security appears to be out of control".
Companies targeted in the Google / Adobe attacks were described by Google as "a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors." Yesterday, Adobe released a patch for vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat which Adobe described as:
"Critical vulnerabilities have been identified in Adobe Reader 9.2 and Acrobat 9.2 for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX, and Adobe Reader 8.1.7 and Acrobat 8.1.7 for Windows and Macintosh. These vulnerabilities could cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system."
In other words, if exploited the vulnerabilities could lead to arbitrary code execution, i.e. the ability to install malware such as backdoors and data theft trojans. Adobe has not yet confirmed whether yesterday's patch was related to the vulnerabilities exploited in the Google and Adobe targeted attacks.
In a separate announcement, Google is reassuring users of their cloud-based storage services that "While some intellectual property on our corporate network was compromised, we believe our customer cloud-based data remains secure." Remember that in the case of "cloud" services such as that offered by Google Apps or Evernote, the data is merely stored on a remote server, not your own, and it is subject to the same types of compromises to which any other physical computer could be subjected. Unless you independently employ multiple layers of encryption for the cloud-stored data, it may not be the safest bet for sensitive data.
So the prudent thing for me to do (which I will promptly do) is to make Yahoo my default browser on my iPhone! Hope this will help.
I can’t imagine what good that would do or why one would want to do it, but certainly the iPhone allows you to use the browser of your choice. The attacks on Google are the same attacks happening to companies across the western world (including Yahoo). Google took the high road, being honest and forthright in an effort to bring light to this tremendous and growing assault on companies. They should be commended. In any event, the breach has no bearing on the search engine or its effectiveness. In all likelihood, the attackers were trying to steal the algorithm to recreate it themselves.